Shadowrun Topic(Talk & Questions)

[Vknight]

This is for talking and throwing things about the Runners and the Shadows which they hide under.
Keep it civil between editions just remember 5th is bad. Now that has been accepted.
Post ideas for Runs, games not involving Shadowrunners, Characters(and to what edition they belong), also post build etc.

This is to get those ideas flowing for everyone into Shadowrun
It is also to help each other with were is that is it here why not there and so on. I.E questions, to enlighten people from the mad dribble that is my insane font.

Now that we have all the basics of why, now onto some things.

Suggestions for a Run going to Centralia because Bug Spirits using the Mine Fire to hide.

-Best way in 4th edition at character creation with 400 points to make a character with, Raptor Cyber Legs who is also an Adept.
Do Raptor Legs work with Lower Limb Cyber Legs or does it have to be the full leg, same with Ferrari and Hydraulic enhancements to cyber-legs.
Any ways to reduce Essence Cost at character creation besides the Nanotreatment(which it suggests to not allow), and Alphaware.

I currently have it at, Essence 4.4, for 18 points
Adapsin, Cyber-leg Right Alphaware, Cyber-leg Left Alphaware
If Adapsin has a Alphaware equivalent the Essence will change to 4.44, for 24 points
If their is some Quality that decreases cyber Essence cost then we can get it even lower, hopefully to the point the Essence cost is under 1.

I don't see anything saying Lower-Limb Only Cyber-legs will or won't work so I do not know.
If they will then the cost drops down to 8 points with a end Essence of 5.28.
And if such a quality exists that lowers Essence costs for Cyber(they have a quality which doubles its effects so one can hope)
Hopefully I can get this build to work so I can play Kickboxing partially cyber-ninja...:smallbiggrin: Check my most recent dump on Demotivators thread to understand

[Kaun]

We going to try and get another Shadowrun general chat going aye? i wonder if we can get this one to 10 pages with out it slipping into necro territory.

I have no answer for your question Vk but i do have one of my own. Well more of a thought really.

I think i'm going back to Pink Mohawks for my next game, mainly because my players are morons when it comes to leg work anyway. The get frustrated easily. The focus on unimportant aspects of the leg work and ignore some of the key factors. They eat up all this game time just fingering there b**s and worrying about all these obscure possible outcomes that nothing ever really gets done. And then after that they end up kicking in the door and shooting up the place anyway.

Ehh just seems like to much trouble to change them, may as well change the style of game.

[DigoDragon]

My campaign died early due to... ah, a player dying actually. And others simply disappearing from the grid. I still have all the notes as I hope to restart it with a new group (plus the one surviving player that's still around).

It takes place in Denver 2072 and I was running a few of the Denver Missions as a warm up. The prior group was together in a campaign I ran in Seattle 2070, just at the start of the "Technomancer Witch Hunts". They rescued an NPC technomancer teen and helped her become a runner in her own right. Was quite fun watching runners corrupt a somewhat innocent wallflower.


This Denver campaign though, I had a dark idea that our little Techno spent two years resenting the hunts and thus started up a splinter cult off Ex Pacis. Her group were stealing Sim module shipments and secretly adding a hot-sim back door before letting the goods become "found" by the authorities and put back on the market. The back door allowed the technos to release a hot-sim virus that would turn the user into a violent zombie.

The PCs would pick up clues of this plan from certain missions, and then last run would be to stop the virus' release on the night of the Combat Biker championships (being held in Denver on Feb, 2073). Otherwise... prepare for Denver to become a "Romero Film" :smallbiggrin: The fact that this previous little wallflower NPC is now the BBEG was going to be one awesome twist to hit the players with. Alas, not meant to be.

[Rhynn]

So is it just me, or are the metavariants, changelings, and drakes in the Runner's Companion the worst thing in 4E? I like the lifestyles, qualities, contacts, etc. in the book, but every time I skim over that junk I just have to wonder who thought it was a good idea...

[Vknight]

So is it just me, or are the metavariants, changelings, and drakes in the Runner's Companion the worst thing in 4E? I like the lifestyles, qualities, contacts, etc. in the book, but every time I skim over that junk I just have to wonder who thought it was a good idea...

They make sense to me.
Metavariants are simply different mythologies displaying themselves onto a common frame rather then making something new. Edit existing rather then creating new makes sense.
Similar thing with Surge afflicted its like a benevolent version of Vampirism, not wholly negative or positive, that being the case it could be a base breaker but at the same time we already had insect spirits mutating people so why not something else.
Drakes I got nothing, I'd love to see one in play but yeah.

They are fair points for both sides but I see them as more good then bad. Also with Surge one can make amphibious elf which is just fun. And I think that what people need in Shadowrun that ability to do the thing which is awesome or maybe silly but it works within the setting logic.

Like in Eclipse Phase with the ability to play a Uplifted Psychic Gorrila that uses robot bodies and used to be an MMA fighter

[Vknight]

Also found all of this, sorry for double post

This is what I found for answer to my question with some digging
Went online scrounging and found all of this. Need to find the book with Biocompatability, and Type-O-System(The post said they were in Augmentation so I will look their)

Biocompatability (10 BP): Reduce the Essence cost of either cyberware or bioware by 10 percent (choose one type). Does not apply to genetech. This quality may only be taken once.

Type O System (30 BP): The character can't accept second-hand bioware; basic bioware is considered delta grade for purposes of interacting with a type O body (1/2 Essence Cost, but nuyen prices remain the same).

pp. 48-49:
Cyberware Suites allow you to buy a bunch of cyberware in a bundle, reducing its total Essence Cost. The book has a listing of canned Cyberware Suites; others can be invented, subject to GM approval

p. 88
Cellular Repair is an expensive medical treatment that can restore lost Essence. If the Essence loss is caused by 'ware, the 'ware must first be removed.

p. 90
Adapsin is a Transgenic gene treatment that reduces the Essence cost of cyberware (not bioware) by 10 percent, if the treatment is applied before the implant. Adapsin is not available at character creation; check with your GM to get approval.


This is what I reasoned out of it.
Adapsin reduces costs by 10%
Alpha 20% reduction in cost
Biocompatability 10% Cyber or Bioware
Suites since buying two legs with mods can apply that is another 10%

With all of that
Full Legs come in at
.5 Each
Adapsin comes in at 0.14
For a Essence cost of 1.14
And at a cost of 16 points. If the Quality that lets you get gear above availability 12 applies for Betware then if we buy as a suite
It comes in at .94 Essence. and a cost of 43 points for the qualities and cyber, which doesn't factor in costs to upgrade those legs to be kicking death machines(Upgrade Strength and Agility along with Hydraulics)

Or if a Gm would be generous because its the only Cyber gear the character has and they are spending 10 points for Biomcompatability getting the Betaware + Cyber Suite would work.

This is of course going on the assumption that we still need to use the full leg. If we don't then all this could be applied to lower costs to also gain Cyber-eyes or some such thing.
So the legs can be brought to 1 Essence cost or lower.
Through either use of qualities or the GM saying its ok.
We don't need either of those things if you only need Lower Legs for Raptor Legs Mod.

Also Cyber-limbs give you an extra damage track box.
So a Cyber-Arm gives you 1
but so does a Cyber Hand/Cyber Lower-Arm....
Does this bug anyone else that half a limb gives you one wound box the same as a full limb.

By the rules you could do this
Get it as a Suite, Alphaware, and Biocompatability
Cyber Hand, Cyber Hand, Cyber Foot, Cyber Foot
0.6 Essence Cost. 8 Points
And now you have 8 + 4 + Body/2 boxes for the wound track
So an Orc on the low end has 15 Boxes.

[Vknight]

After checking that yes Raptor Legs can be gotten on only Lower Legs I have created a character!
Here is the build for everyone.

Character Build

How I Built Yuji
Yuji

Part I: Metatype
First I looked over the Metatype options.
Ork, and Troll both fill the more physical side I'm going with. But the costs of Troll are large and the lowered maxes for a agile fighter don't appeal.
Ork could work I decide.
Looking at Elf I don't feel it for this build despite the grace it doesn't provide enough
Dwarf the lowered speed makes it a no
Human works perfectly average stats are made up for with the amazing +1 Edge.
So I decide Human or Ork. The 20 points could hurt me as I already have to spend a bit for the concept to get those legs but it would save me points on Strength/Body later.
I look over Surge stuff for some ideas. I decide against it for this build.
The metavariants don't provide enough to be worthwhile for Yuji.

So after looking over options I decide to make the Baseline Yuji Human. Though Ork also works well
Points Left(400)

Part II; Qualities
This is easy as Yuji is going to be a Martial Arts Raptor Clawed Adept
Yuji needs certain things for that too work.

Adept; 5 points
So we can get all those benefits to boost Martial Arts/Unarmed Combat

Martial Arts; 5 points
This one is hard as each style gives its own benefits.
Capoeria works well for a sweeping kick style
Karate & Kung Fu works for a martial artist in general
Muay Thai and the raw power is great and since he relies on that with his legs we take it along with the option to get +2 DV instead of +1 DV

Biocompatability; 10 points
-10% off the Essence Cost of Cyberware is great especially if Yuji were to lose a eye or something well running the ability to replace things without major damage to his Adept powers is worth the cost

At the moment I don't know what Negative Qualities I see on this character so I leave that for later
Points Left(380)

Part III; Stats
Body(1), Agility(1), Reaction(1), Strength(1), Charisma(1), Intuition(1), Logic(1), Willpower(1), Edge(2), Magic(1)
Hmmm, good base set up.

First I decide Yuji is more Agile and quick on his feet.
He has some strength but his real power will be in his super strong Raptor Legs.

So on the Physical Stats I decide
Body(3), Agility(4), Reaction(4), Strength(2)
For 90 points

On the Mental Side, I go with a quick thinking strong willed individual
Charisma(3), Intuition(3), Logic(2), Willpower(3)
For 70 points

Now on Magic I throw down 30 points
Bringing it to 4

So My End Stats for Yuji are
Body(3), Agility(4), Reaction(4), Strength(2)
Charisma(3), Intuition(3), Logic(2), Willpower(3)
Magic(4), Edge(2)
A good set up I decide. If I really wanted I could increase Edge or Magic again for another 10 points but I leave that for later
A less Social Yuji could increase his Magic, Agility or Edge. But I like to have a chance of making a social check

Points Left(190)

Part IV; Cyberware
Yeah I'm not doing Skills next I need to first give Yuji his big thing his Raptor Legs then I'll do Skill stuff

First Yuji got his Cyber Lower-Legs as a Suite so together. I wonder how and decide it probably was an accident that cost him his legs.
I go for Alphaware legs because one cannot get any better without the Quality(Restricted Gear, which lets one get either a piece of gear above Availability 12 or normally up to the Gm if you could take it), its 5 points that I will probably need

As Alphaware the Legs cost me $65,000 total credits, or 13 points
They eat, .54 Essence
This leaves Yuji with 5.46 Essence, if we wanted to we could give Yuji some Cyber-eyes or some such things.
But first thing to do is that lowers our Magic(4) to Magic(3), sad times

Now we mod the Raptor Legs
Nightgale Feet of Fury, +1 die to Unarmed Kicking Tests(+0 Credits)
First Custom Limb to get the Agility up to 4(+1500 Credits)
Increased Capacity 4(+4000 Credits)
Armor 1 provides some protection(+300 Credits)
Hydraulic Jacks to boost jumps and fall resistance, we get them at rank 2(+4000 Credits)
Cyber-Spurs use Unarmed Combat so we grab those(+1800 Credits)
We Enhance the Cyberlimbs Strength by 3(+750 Credits)
We Enhance the Cyberlimbs Agility by 4(+1000 Credits)
The end cost for all these is
13,350 Credits
So the Cyber Limbs with all mods included cost us
16points, and we have 1650 Credits left over

The stats for Yuji's legs are
Body(3), Agility(8), Strength(8), Armor(+1/+1)
+1dice Unarmed Combat Skill Checks
+2dice Gymnastics Skill Checks
+2dice Jumping Skill Checks
+2 For determining Agility on Jump checks
+20% the distance he travels on jump checks
His movement is also, Walking(15 meters), Running(37.5 meters)

Points Left(174)

Part V; Skills
Well we keep saying Yuji is a Martial Artist and Muay Thai fighter
If you have a kind Gm he may let you customize/make custom skill groups. As its a group of similar skills. My personal example be 'Extreme Sports', which includes Diving, Parachuting, Pilot: Ground Craft, Pilot: Aircraft
We will go under the assumption you Gm is not. If he does see about something like Street Brawler(Unarmed Combat, Gymnastics, Running, Pistols) focused on using the terrain and light weaponry to win a fight

So we give him
Skill: Unarmed(5), Specialization +2 Muay Thai
Skill: Pistols(3)
Skill Group: Athletics(3)
Skill: Con(3)
Skill: Etiquette(2)
Skill Group: Stealth(3)
This Costs Yuji, 114points. It also gives great coverage for a street punk whose probably not interested in magic/may not have realized he has Adept powers and just thinks he's awesome

Points Left(60)

Part VI; Adept Powers
With Spurs we already having lethal damage on Yuji's kicks.
So we don't Killing Hands because Yuji is a kicker, and knows it
Cloak would work well for being stealthy, but will eat into our limited pool.
IF one really wanted to they could pick up Distance Strike to give Yuji kicks that hit from 3 meters away(or 4 if you count the point lost from lower Essence). For our Yuji I decide against it
I decide for
Penetrating Strike Level 1(0.25)
Critical Strike Level 1(0.25)
Smashing Blow(1.0)
Improved Reflexes Level 1(1.5)
Now for the person building Yuji comes the really hard part, do they upgrade his mobility now? Or does the person instead upgrade the power of his Unarmed Strikes? Or does the person leave things as they are?

I went with more Speed so I bought Magic up to 4.
And applied the following changes
Critical Strike Level 2(0.5)
Smashing Blow(1.0)
Improved Reflexes Level 2(2.5)
One more level of Reflexes makes Yuji even faster and lets him throw up to 3 kicks. Along with Critical Strike boosting damage works nicely with the Smashing Blow power which doubles the kicks damage against objects.
This makes Yuji a terror dealing; 2 * (9 + Hits on Unarmed Attack) against objects. If you don't care about kicking down doors one could instead grab Improved Ability at Level 2 to increase his Unarmed Die pool, or Killing Hands+Elemental Strikes. Or anything they felt would go with their idea of Yuji.

Points Left(50)

Part VII; Lifestyle & Gear
Remember that 1650 Credits we had left over? I did!
We have spent already 16/50 of the points that can be spent on gear

Yuji Lives a Middle Class Lifestyle, I decide and he's got it for 5 more months

I decide for two guns. A light pistol and a heavy pistol should things go really bad. A Shock Glove for melee is also a good idea
Colt America L36(Comes with no Mods)
Colt Manhunter(Comes with Laser Sight)
Shock Glove(Its melee)
Credits Left(1000)

Colt America L36 mods
-Silencer, Quick-Draw+Concealable Holster
Credits Left(625)

Colt Manhunter
-Silencer, Quick-Draw+Concealable Holster, Periscope
Credits Left(200)

Spare Clips; I grab 6 of these 3 for each gun.
Credits Left(170)

Now I spend another point to get 5000 credits. Yuji is focused on being subtle so his mods and ammo concerns show that with some greater firepower if needed
Subsonic Rounds; 200
Regular Ammo; 200
Ex-Explosive; 50
Credits Left(3470)

Now on Armor its easy to know what Yuji will have.
Leather Jacket; The coat can be worn over the clothes and looks normal
Actioneer Business Clothes; This lets Yuji go high class without losing protection and can be worn other other things
Lined Coat; Heavy duty protection more for concealing identity
Urban Explorer Jumpsuit; Good for when doing recon work
I decide against mods on his armor. Though Nonconductivity could always be applied to greater protection from electrical attacks
Credits Left(570)

For his Commlink and Operating system I went with simple but cheap
-Also spent another point for another 5000 Credits
Hermes Ikon for the Commlink
Novatech Navi for the Operating System
I also buy, Biometric Reader, Nanopaste Trodes, Skinlink, and normal Trodes
For general uses. Pro User(Analyze[4], Browse[4], Command[2], Edit[4])
Credits Left(70)

I spend 2 points here, for 10,000 more Credits
I buy the Suzuki Mirage Racing Bike
Handling +2
Acceleration 20/50, Speed 200
Pilot 1, Body 6, Armor 4, Sensor 1
Credits Left(3570)
Now looking at things I decide to modify my bike
First up I upgrade the Pilot to 3
Improve with Motion Sensor
And Smart Tires for a +1 Handling sure the Bike is slower but its drives like a dream and later on we could grab an improved engine for Acceleration and/Speed
Credits Left(1020)

Now the utilities of life, and I spend another 1 point here
Auto-picker Rating(4); x1
Metal Restraints; x5
Miniwelder; x2
Glue Sprayer; x2
Wireclippers; x2
Flashlights; x4
Gas Mask; x2
Gecko Tape Gloves; x2
Climbing Gear; x1
Light Stick; x21
Grapple Gun; x1
Stealth Rope; 300 meters
Catalyst Stick; x3
Biomonitor; x1
GPS; x2
Hazmat Suit; x1
Respirator Rating[5]; x2
Micro Flare Launcher; x2
Micro Flares; x12
Credits Left(0)

I decide against a DocWagon Contract(Though for 5 points a gold one is worth it)

I spend 3 more points here
Fake SIN's
Rating: 4
Rating: 3
Credits Left(3000)

Fake Licenses(Only bought things that made sense you would need a license for, a Gas Mask in the future along with extreme sports gear does not grab me as monitored)
Grapple Gun Rating(3)
Hazmat Suit Rating(4)
Autopicker Rating(4)
Cyber-Legs(4)
Cyber-Spurs(4)
Miniwelder(3)
Light Pistol(4)
Colt Manhunter(4)
Credits Left(0)
And we are down Yuji has equipment and now needs friends
Points Left(38)

Part VIII; Friends In High Places
First up Yuji needs a friend in the Underworld
Garry(Hacker), Loyalty(3), Connection(3)

A Friends on the Force
Luthor(Loanstar or Similar depending on City), Loyalty(4), Connection(2)

The guy he does not fully trust but is useful
Baxter(Local Ganger), Loyalty(2), Connection(2)

An old friend
Sol(Corporate Head Hunter and Old Sparring Partner), Loyalty(3), Connection(3)

Finally we grab him a Fixer
Grin(Fixer), Loyalty(4), Connection(4)

Now if one wants they could go around and give each Contact a quote to sum them up.
Here are mine for these guys
Garry; "We never meet, doesn't mean I won't help a friend out."
Luthor; "Good men, on both sides of the law."
Bazter; "HEY $&!! #@*3 come get some!"
Sol; "Always remember from were you come."
Grin; "My runners are not just Nuyen their lives."

Points Left(8)

Part IX; The Last Point Shuffle
Well with those last floating points
I buy up Pistols and Con to 4.
Points Lefts(0)

But wait we don't have any flaws on Yuji!
Looking at things, many don't make sense.
Though I find one I like

Records on File(Ares)
and use those points to Boost Stealth to 4
Points Left(0)


The Actual Build
Yuji, 'Raptor Adept'
Metatype[Human], Ethnicity[Japanese/English]
Age[20-22], Sex[Male or Female], Height[5'6], Weight[?]

Body[3], Agility[4], Reaction[4], Strength[2],
Charisma[3], Intuition[3], Logic[2], Willpower[3]
Magic[4 From Essence Loss], Edge[2]
Essence[5.46]

Initiative[9], Initiative Passes[3]

Skill Groups
Atheltics[3], Stealth[4]

Active Skills
Con[4], Etiquette[2], Pistols[4], Unarmed Combat[5; +2 Muay Thai]

Qualities
Bio-compatibility; -10% Essence Cost for Cyberware
Adept; Can gain Adept powers and Magic stat
Martial Arts; Muay Thai +2DV of Unarmed Attacks
Record On File[Ares]; Ares has Yuji's life from 1 to around 17 area

Adept Powers
Improved Reflexes Level 2
Critical Strike Level 2
Smash Blow

Gear
Primary Lifestyle; Medium
Nuyen[3d6*50]
Fake SINs
Name[?], Rating: 4
Name[?], Rating: 3

Fake Licenses
Grapple Gun Rating(3), Hazmat Suit Rating(4), Autopicker Rating(4), Cyber-Legs(4), Cyber-Spurs(4), Miniwelder(3), Light Pistol(4), Colt Manhunter(4)

Weapons
Colt America L36; Silencer, Quick Draw+Concealable Holster
Colt Manhunter; Silencer, Periscope, Quick Draw+Concealable Holster
Shock Glove
Cyber-Spurs; Mounted in Raptor Legs
Subsonic Rounds[x200], Regular Rounds[x200], Ex-Explosive Rounds[x50]

Armor
Leather Jacket; Ballistic 2/Impact 2, or +2/+2 to armor worn under it
Auctioneer Business Clothes; Ballistic 5/Impact 3
Lined Coat; Ballistic 6/Impact 4
Urban Explorer Jumpsuit; Ballistic 6/Impact 6

Augmentations
Raptor Cyber-Legs Lower
Body(3), Agility(8), Strength(8), Armor(+1/+1)
+1dice Unarmed Combat Skill Checks
+2dice Gymnastics Skill Checks, and Jumping Skill Checks
+2 For determining Agility on Jump checks
+20% the distance he travels on jump checks
His movement is also, Walking(15 meters), Running(37.5 meters)

General Purpose
Auto-picker Rating(4); x1
Metal Restraints; x5
Miniwelder; x2
Glue Sprayer; x2
Wireclippers; x2
Flashlights; x4
Gas Mask; x2
Gecko Tape Gloves; x2
Climbing Gear; x1
Light Stick; x21
Grapple Gun; x1
Stealth Rope; 300 meters
Catalyst Stick; x3
Biomonitor; x1
GPS; x2
Hazmat Suit; x1
Respirator Rating[5]; x2
Micro Flare Launcher; x2
Micro Flares; x12

Vehicle
Suzuki Mirage Racing Bike
Handling +3
Acceleration 16/40, Speed 160
Pilot 3,
Body 6, Armor 4, Sensor 1
Mods: Smart Tires, Motion Sensor

Commlink
Commlink[Hermes Ikon], Operational System[Novatech Navi]
Response[3], Signal[3]
System[4], Firewall[3]
Pro User(Analyze[4], Browse[4], Command[2], Edit[4])
Trodes, Nanopaste Trodes, Biometric Reader, Skinlink

Contacts
Garry(Hacker), Loyalty(3), Connection(3)
Luthor(Loanstar or Similar depending on City), Loyalty(4), Connection(2)
Baxter(Local Ganger), Loyalty(2), Connection(2)
Sol(Corporate Head Hunter & Old Sparring Partner), Loyalty(3), Connection(3)
Grin(Fixer), Loyalty(4), Connection(4)

I didn't give him any Knowledge skills and leave that for the individual playing him to decide. Though I'd go with Sports, Fine Cuisine, and other things that mix the Street + Upper Class life

Some Dice Pools
Muay Thai Kicks; 16 dice, Damage(11 + Hits)*2 vs. objects, AP(-)
Other Muay Thai; 11 dice
Pistols; 8 dice
General Athletics; 5/7 dice without Raptor Legs, 11 dice with Raptor Legs
Jumping; 17 dice
Gymnatics; 13 dice
Stealth; Involving Intuition 7 dice. Involving Agility without Raptor Legs 8 dice. Involving Agility with Raptor Legs 12 dice
Con; 6 dice, Etiquette; 5 dice


The Backstory I Gave Yuji
Yuji was raised by his parents who were Ares employees.
Taught Martial Arts along with a few other skills. When he turned 16 his legs were lost thanks to an explosion from some gun happy Shadowrunners.
Ares loaned his parents the money to fund his replacement Cyber-Legs.
Yuji pulled his own money and got them upgraded to Raptor Legs, secretly.
Over the next 4(to 6) years he did his own thing slowly becoming a Shadowrunner, with a mind for efficiency not pretty lights.
Ares has most of Yuji's training, skills, that he has cyber-limbs, and are aware he's an Adept(despite not being aware himself)
Yuji lives in his own apartment away from his parents.
He grew up under a pair of military scientist and was trained to fight. He also spent some time on the streets and fighting/becoming a Runner.
Those years he met his contacts, or firmly established the relationship he has with each of them

-
From this backstory you could also give Yuji SINner flaw

[DigoDragon]

So is it just me, or are the metavariants, changelings, and drakes in the Runner's Companion the worst thing in 4E?

The metavariants are okay, but no one from my former group ever used them. It helped with statting out some infected NPCs at least. I love the changelings and have made two characters with Surge (oddly, a Techno and a shaman). As someone else mentioned, you could make an aquatic type character which can be interesting.

Never used the drakes template. Might be cool for a boss NPC, but eh. Never got around to an idea.

[LibraryOgre]

For me, the thing about metavariants is you'd almost never see them unless you were in their home range. They're there for color; making a runner of one of them is uncommon, simply because they're such a small part of the population and may be an even smaller part of the runner population except in their home range.

[Rhynn]

For me, the thing about metavariants is you'd almost never see them unless you were in their home range. They're there for color; making a runner of one of them is uncommon, simply because they're such a small part of the population and may be an even smaller part of the runner population except in their home range.

I can't get over the fact that they're just ramming in 50% D&D critters and 50% every humanoid from any mythology into Shadowrun, and that they plain don't fit; they come from nowhere and are never mentioned or used anywhere else, as far as I know. It's dreadful. (Also "zomg u can b a dragon so cool".)

[LibraryOgre]

I can't get over the fact that they're just ramming in 50% D&D critters and 50% every humanoid from any mythology into Shadowrun, and that they plain don't fit; they come from nowhere and are never mentioned or used anywhere else, as far as I know. It's dreadful. (Also "zomg u can b a dragon so cool".)

Drakes are another matter altogether, but they have been mentioned in the lore, especially if you include Earthdawn. They weren't prominent in SR, however.

[DigoDragon]

I can't get over the fact that they're just ramming in 50% D&D critters and 50% every humanoid from any mythology into Shadowrun, and that they plain don't fit;

They're easy enough to ignore if you don't want them. I've never had centaurs, drakes, faeries, etc. in my games and my players never really care to venture much outside the core races for their characters.

As far as critters that eat shadowrunners, I've preferred to pull stuff from more modern mythology, like the Chupacabra, Jersey Devil, Goat Men, Men in Black, Hollow Earth, etc. I think it fits nicely with SR's urban setting.

[Rhynn]

So all the Shadowrun going on (SR5 coming out and playing Shadowrun Returns) got me to dig out my old SR2 books a few days ago, and I was reading The Grimoire on insect spirits and toxic shamans... comparing the rules to the SR4 rules in Street Magic, I must say I think the loss of Threat Ratings was a big one.

Basically, in SR2, a toxic shaman or insect shaman performs various tasks to increase his Threat Rating, which makes the shaman or its spirit more powerful. An insect shaman, specifically, can summon and control a number of insect spirits based on his Threat Ratin and Magic (up to 10 x Threat Rating individual spirits with total combined Force Ratings of equal to Magic + 5 x Threat Rating; and no, those numbers don't add up!), flesh-forms not included. Once a Queen is summoned, every time the shaman's Threat Rating increases, the Queen's Spirit Energy (a Free Spirit thing; Spirit Energy is added to Force for all purposes, basically) increases, and the Queen can use Spirit Energy to increase the shaman's Threat Rating, or use the shaman's Threat Rating to increase her Spirit Energy. (So long as the Queen does not break free, the shaman's Threat Rating determines the size of the hive, as far as I can tell, so increasing the TR may be smarter than increasing SE.)

What this means is that while fighting a hive directly is pretty much suicide for most runners, they can make the hive smaller by thwarting the shaman's designs. (Of course, if there's a Queen, every time the shaman loses Threat Rating the Queen has a chance to break free and take control; however, a hive without a shaman has, by the book, a maximum size of 0 insect spirits...) This is very suggestive of fun play to me: an adventure where the PCs have to try to thwart multiple goals or plays by an insect shaman, and depending on their success, their final fight is organically harder or easier (and the dynamics of the hive may change enormously depending on whether the Queen has broken free or not).

As a side note, it's interesting to compare the conceptions of insect spirits between SR2 and SR4: in SR2, they're very much presented as actual insect spirits, summoned by shamans who follow an insect totem; while SR4 presents the resemblance to insects as more coincidental and the spirits as having little legitimate connection to Earth's plane/sphere.

Also, it seems, from reading Street Magic, that SR4 has completely dropped the idea of toxic Avenger (... running the shadows in Tromaville?) shamans. SR2 presents two types: Poisoners and Avengers, but SR4 just seems to present four variations of Poisoners. I prefer the old approach, I think: Avengers (stated to be the most common kind) are actually trying to avenge the corrupted Earth, but they care just as little for metahumanity as Poisoners, and will kill and destroy everyone to achieve their goal of avenging (more than protecting) nature. I vastly prefer the idea of eco-terrorist toxic shamans, whose goals are essentially understandable but still totally hostile to metahumanity in general, over the idea of cartoonish Captain Planet villains.

[Bobby Derie]

I helped write Street Magic so maybe I can chime in a bit here. As I recall, the idea of getting rid of Threat Ratings was in part because TR were always unnecessary add-on mechanics, and (believe it or not) we were trying to simplify and consolidate the rules rather than mechanically copy-and-paste material from earlier editions (literally, there were chunks of Grimoire for 1st edition that were copypasta'd directly into Grimoire II and Magic in the Shadows). Toxic threats already have abilities PCs don't in the form of Sacrificing metamagic, insect spirits, etc., giving them an extra screw-you-I'm-the-bad-guy mechanic is just an overcomplication - especially if we ever planned to open up those abilities as PC options in some later book, which was talked about a little bit.

Re: Insect spirits in general, there was always a slight Lovecraftian vibe to the whole insect shaman experience, with the alien mindset warping the magician's mind and morality and the body horror of investing, and so the idea that insect spirits came from somewhere else in the metaplanes wasn't too far of a stretch, and opened up some interesting possibilities. We didn't get to do quite as much with it as I would have liked, but them's the breaks.

Re: Avengers, I don't recall quite as much discussion about them other than "Okay, so they're pissed-off eco-magicians. So what?" They fell under the "toxic shaman" label in SR2 because they were bad guys, but mechanically they weren't any different from the Captain Pollution types, and starting in the end of SR2 and during most of SR3 Shadowrun was really going away from the Shaman/Mage dichotomy thing, which is why SR4 went out of its way to try and present threat/corrupted magician options applicable to multiple traditions.

[LibraryOgre]

Yeah, I very much noticed the de-emphasis in the difference between mages and shamans.

[Rhynn]

Awesome! I generally love Street Magic - especially the Awakened versions of real-world magical traditions. That stuff is awesome.

And I agree it's definitely a mechanical streamlining, and I understand it, but it also seems to be a major move towards more "modern" story-based systems where more things rely on the GM adjudicating everything. I like Threat Ratings because they're more sandbox-style - a mechanic that lets PCs engage the insect shaman or toxic shaman indirectly, without the GM ad-hocing things. I'll also agree that they're confusingly presented in The Grimoire, for insect spirits (they're very simple for toxic shamans; add the shaman's Threat Rating to the toxic free spirit's Force). For instance, I don't have any idea, from reading the relevant pages in The Grimoire, whether a Queen even can maintain a hive without a shaman. But I really find I like the idea of having mechanics (or even guidelines) that tell me how fast a hive grows, because that seems like it would be a major concern in any adventure involving a hive. "As fast as you need it to" is a dull answer for me, an OSR lover of random tables and content-generating mechanics...

The SR2 insect spirits are definitely sort of Lovecrafty ("though all insect spirits need not be evil, they are most certainly alien beings"; "The typical astral quest of an insect shaman would probably drive another magician insane"; "the alien nature of the totem will inevitably take over"...). I think the "semantic drift" (or whatever you want to call it) in the nature of the insect spirits makes sense.

Incidentally, did the blanket immunity to normal weapons come in in SR3, or was it added in SR4's Street Magic? In SR2, only the queens are immune to normal weapons.


Another topic of random interest: in SR2, Priority A for Attributes gives a human an average of 5 in each attribute. (There are 6 attributes.) In SR4's Priority System from the Runner's Companion, Priority A gives you an average of 3.5 in each. In SR5, Priority A gives you an average of 4 in each. Lower priorities follow suit; and in SR2, each other priority gives more of whatever you're getting (Priority A is 1,000,000 nuyen, or 40 skill points in a game with probably 1/2 or 1/3 the number of skills needed for each character type). SR5 characters would have to be created with 500-600 points in SR4. Basically, there's major fluctuation in the power of starting PCs in each edition. Fun trivia and somewhat interesting, I think...

[Bobby Derie]

And I agree it's definitely a mechanical streamlining, and I understand it, but it also seems to be a major move towards more "modern" story-based systems where more things rely on the GM adjudicating everything. I like Threat Ratings because they're more sandbox-style - a mechanic that lets PCs engage the insect shaman or toxic shaman indirectly, without the GM ad-hocing things.
You and I have different definitions of sandbox, then. It's not like the PCs have a Threat Rating app on their commlink that tells them the magical Threat has been foiled, at the table it's an invisible, GM-only mechanic which just represents some extra bookkeeping ("Hmm...they did stop Papa Roach from getting his cronut, I suppose that deserves a tick down on the Threat Rating.") and an arbitrary fistful of screw-you dice towards the PCs. At best you can argue that it's kinda-sortof a guideline to the power level of the threat - but if that's the case, why not reflect that in their stats instead of making up another attribute? Why not use the professional rating?


Incidentally, did the blanket immunity to normal weapons come in in SR3, or was it added in SR4's Street Magic? In SR2, only the queens are immune to normal weapons.
I'm pretty sure it was standardized in SR3, at least for manifest spirits. Flesh-forms were always a bit wonky when it came to stats.


Another topic of random interest: in SR2, Priority A for Attributes gives a human an average of 5 in each attribute. (There are 6 attributes.) In SR4's Priority System from the Runner's Companion, Priority A gives you an average of 3.5 in each. In SR5, Priority A gives you an average of 4 in each. Lower priorities follow suit; and in SR2, each other priority gives more of whatever you're getting (Priority A is 1,000,000 nuyen, or 40 skill points in a game with probably 1/2 or 1/3 the number of skills needed for each character type). SR5 characters would have to be created with 500-600 points in SR4. Basically, there's major fluctuation in the power of starting PCs in each edition. Fun trivia and somewhat interesting, I think...
Priority system from Runner's Companion on was not balanced against point-buy, it's part of the reason why I wrote up PACKS originally. I don't think you can directly compare characters from SR5 to previous editions - they changed a lot, some of it fairly arbitrarily.

[Kaun]

I would like to get some peoples thoughts on how to push the Dystopian setting themes.

I always find it hard to get that side of the setting across well to my players. They look at themselves as highly trained specialists, which to a point, is a true statement. But when ever it comes to mission payments they are always confused by the meager payments offered by Mr Johnson.

The old risk vs reward argument inevitably starts up and after giving it some thought i think the problem is about conveying Dystopian aspect of the setting properly.

The stealing cars over doing runs argument is a common one and i am trying to counter it will while keeping the setting themes in mind.

I have been trying to map it out well in my head and so far my thinking is;

> 30% of the population is struggling to get enough money to feed themselves. They are likely SINless, homeless coupled with all manor of other issues. Drug addictions, medical issues and so on.

> 40% of the population are wage slaves who work themselves into the grave in low end jobs and are still struggling to make enough to cover rent and feed their families. They spend their lives hoping to get a promotion that nets them a few extra corp benefits. They have few bucks to spare and the idea of been found in the possession of a stolen vehicle and loosing their job, no matter how ****ty it is, terrifies them.

> 20% are in the middle to upper middle class. These are no doubt skilled professionals or valued employees. Life is pretty good, defiantly better then most people out there. They get some decent corp benefits, a nice enough apartment, they eat well. But they would always have that niggling fear in the back of their minds about a corporate downsizing, budget cuts, a bad quarterly review or a mistake at work. Any of these could cause them to loose their jobs and have their comfortable life that they have gotten used to evaporate almost over night. This group might have the extra cash to afford the stolen cars but would they be willing to take the risk in buying them?

>5% are the upper elites. High enough on the corporate mountain to see the summit but still a long way from the top. These guys are movers and shakers, they have nice everything. Houses, cars and so on, generally all provided by the corp in their pay package. These guys are more likely to be the targets of your car thief's rather the potential buyers, yes there will be exceptions to this. These people got to where they are through all manor of devious means and are probably willing to hire runners to acquire themselves a specific car, but generally speaking, legally acquiring high value cars is well within their means.

>1% are right up the top. They are targets for theft rather then buyers. They may occasionally want to purchase a stolen vehicle which can't be acquired through other means but these occurrences would be few and very specific.

>4% are other. Expectations to the rule. Here you will find other runners, the criminal elite and other random and less common elements. Here you actually may find a decent customer base, but are they willing to pay top dollar for the stolen vehicles?

The hole in the stealing cars theory should be a lack of demand. The people who would want the cars generally don't have the creds and those that have the creds generally don't want the cars.

I think my problem really comes down to, getting the realities of how bad life is for those people living in the lower 70%. Getting my players to understand that the lion share of the population are broke and scarred for most of there life.

Anyway, pick this apart, i'm always interested to hear peoples thoughts... and also if you have any ideas on pushing the Dystopian aspects of the setting i would be keen to hear them.

[Rhynn]

I think the big holes in the "stealing cars" idea are that 1. it's really easy to track stolen cars (or really easy to notice a car has its wireless off) and 2. you don't get to sell the car for even half its value even if you do have a regular pipeline for stolen cars, you get maybe 5-10% because you're the street-level guy; just like the dude actually pushing the drugs isn't making the big nuyens, it's the guys who run the distribution and international trade who get rich. Frankly, I think stealing cars is a fine line of work for most runners, but it's not going to pay well.

The rules, IMO, support this pretty decently: let's use SR5's as an example. You've boosted a Saeder-Krupp-Bentley Concordat, worth 65,000¥, taking a pretty damn big risk of getting caught. To find a buyer, you've got to make an Extended Etiquette + Charisma [Social] (10) Test with an interval of 1 week, so we're probably talking a month to find a buyer. (It's the same interval and test for anything between 10,001¥ and 100,000¥ so you might as well go for the Concordat.) That means you're paying for a month of your lifestyle while waiting for the buyer. You get, on average, 16,250¥ for that Concordat (well, probably less, since the buyers are probably better at negotiating prices than you are). Glitches on either test mean bad stuff. For a team of five, that's 3,250¥ each, which covers a low lifestyle and leaves you some spending money (unless you're a troll). And this is all if the GM doesn't think that selling a boosted car is slightly more complex than usual, which is frankly reasonable. And the local organized crime and law enforcement are both going to get interested in your business.

The SR5 rules actually support the "5-10% of the car's value," too - if you've got a pipeline, it's a Contact, who'll give you 5% per 1 Loyalty Rating, so a "just biz" or "regular" pipeline (the default, you can assume) is going to pay that. So if you're boosting cars as a main source of income, you're probably making 5-10% on each, to cover your expenses and lifestyle.

Anyway, I think your percentages may actually be optimistic (unless you got them out of one of the books, I guess); the middle class would IMO be much smaller (5% - 10%), the elite would be much smaller (say 1%; that's still seven-figure numbers of these elites in the US alone, which sounds like a lot to me), and the amount of SINless people would be larger. But the basic idea is absolutely right.

Generally, conveying the dystopia is a matter of description. It really makes the setting: playing Shadowrun Returns, I found the actual gameplay to be decent, but the dialogue is what makes it. It's noir sci-fi.

So take the time to describe daily life and their surroundings to the players, life in the Barrens and the Sprawl, etc. People living hand-to-mouth, the urban decay, the corrugated metal and plastic sheets that serve as shelter and housing to many, the squats, the flophouses, the apartment-building sized drug/BTL lairs... or, for the corporate wageslaves, the existential desperation of being trapped in the ultimate hamster wheel, the mind-numbing sterility, the constant observation, oppression, and indoctrination (read Brave New World and 1984 and take about half of each for the corporate idyl). In general, emphasize the relentless observation and control exercised by corporations and governments - it's so incredibly easy to keep track of people, and anyone who tries not to be kept track of (like runners) will be harassed, badly. Maybe insert advertising to hammer home that consumerist aspect.

[Bobby Derie]

Stealing cars in Shadowrun has always been a bit needlessly complicated; the more usual "why am I shadowrunning again?" question (especially in SR1-3) usually centered making orichalcum, which has a much higher rate of return and is completely legal.

[DigoDragon]

Yeah, I very much noticed the de-emphasis in the difference between mages and shamans.

Yeah, it's pretty much down to flavor, though my players usually picked Shamans for the linked attributes (They liked Intuition). No one really complained about it.



I would like to get some peoples thoughts on how to push the Dystopian setting themes.

My players generally have the mindset of playing the hero, whether it's the "all-american" type, the "antihero", or the sub sandwich (because some like playing the weirdo). So the way I try to push the Dystopian setting is to show that the PCs are the only ones who potentially care about anything other than themselves.

Half the cops are corrupt and don't bother with following procedures to the letter. No one sticks their neck out to help anyone, and if a kid gets gunned down in the streets? The first reaction of bystandards is to throw some cardboard over the body and walk away. I detail things like pollution and acid rain and make the world feel very... bleak (Watching Blade Runner used to be something of a tradition with my group prior to starting any Shadowrun campaign).

Low payouts are usually explained that Johnsons can readily find low lifes to do the jobs they need done. Runners are an expendable commodity and this often leads the PCs to murder any competition that gets in their way. Ironically, opposing runners kill more PCs than any security force, drone detail, or gang.

[Rhynn]

Low payouts are usually explained that Johnsons can readily find low lifes to do the jobs they need done. Runners are an expendable commodity and this often leads the PCs to murder any competition that gets in their way. Ironically, opposing runners kill more PCs than any security force, drone detail, or gang.

This is excellent and correct, IMO. While different people will have different approaches, I think that in the setting by-the-book, shadowrunners are not consummate professionals chosen for their ability to pull the job off without a hitch. Teams like that exist, but they are tied to the megacorps. Shadowrunners are dirtbags chosen not for their skill, but for their expendability. While you usually (not always!*) want a group that will pull off its objective, you're more concerned with deniability. You wouldn't use shadowrunners for jobs that absolutely must go off without a hitch; you'd use them for jobs where you don't mind if they fail and cause a lot of destruction, where that may even be a sort of secondary objective. They didn't extract the scientist, but they shot up the lab? Good enough!

I also think that the whole "this won't even cover our expenses" thinking is backwards. Clearly your expenses are too high, then. You're in a field where there's always some scumbag eager to take any money offered. If you can't do it cheap, you're not what they were looking for. And if you don't build a rep doing the cheap jobs, you'll never get that big score. (Which, of course, will inevitably go wrong...)

Again drawing on Shadowrun Returns: one of the characters is a Shadowrunner who works as a bartender. That's the sort of people the game is about: dangerous, desperate people, cast outside of mainstream society by circumstance and raised above the masses by their abilities or willingness to do anything, trying to make ends meet. (And sometimes, they get tangled up in something way bigger than themselves: see Strange Days, Children of Men, Babylon AD...)

* IMO an essential element in cyberpunk games is that your employer just might be running an operation where your success is irrelevant, or your failure is expected...

[LibraryOgre]

Yeah, it's pretty much down to flavor, though my players usually picked Shamans for the linked attributes (They liked Intuition). No one really complained about it.


That's part of why I tend to create traditions; I want to arrange the attributes like I want to arrange them, and want to summon the spirits I want to summon. And I'm a sucker for a high Int.

I also noticed that the emphasis on domains for spirits seemed lower.


Stealing cars in Shadowrun has always been a bit needlessly complicated; the more usual "why am I shadowrunning again?" question (especially in SR1-3) usually centered making orichalcum, which has a much higher rate of return and is completely legal.

Yeah, I typically view boosting cars and bikes as "gang work", rather than "runner work", a fine line in and of itself. It's the kind of thing that you make your business because you don't have the skillset for deniable covert ops work.

I think part of it is the change in focus of Shadowrun... not so much the "pink mohawk v. mirrorshades" dichotomy that's talked about, but the "neo-anarchists v. deniable assets" dichotomy. The early material (1e) had a lot of neo-anarchist revolutionary vibe... you're the little guy, fighting against the megacorps. The newer material tends to be less of that and far more "you are professional deniable assets."

I kind of link it to the decrease in Shadowtalk in the sourcebooks... I can't help but compare Street Magic to Awakenings, or Man and Machine to Cybertechnology... the early parts of the book laying out how things worked, the gear catalogs discussing what's good and what's crap, and a thin section in the books related to the specific rules.

EDIT: In further news, get off my lawn, you damn kids. :smallbiggrin:

[Black Jester]

My players generally have the mindset of playing the hero, whether it's the "all-american" type, the "antihero", or the sub sandwich (because some like playing the weirdo). So the way I try to push the Dystopian setting is to show that the PCs are the only ones who potentially care about anything other than themselves.

Just because the setting might be dystopian, doesn't mean that the player characters have to be a bunch of horrible people; you can have a very meaningful and fun game if you have the players as a group of rather altruistic people who are more like modern Robin Hoods and try to protect their neighbourhood or go after a particularly vile opponent, like insect spirits or groups like Tamanous. Well, especially in a rather unpleasant setting, you can actually make the fact that the professional criminals are about the most altruistic and helpful people around a meaningful part of the grimness of the setting.
I remember a game waaay back in second edition where we played a gang/initiation group of Ki-Adepts and urban shamans who tried to keep their little part of the barrens from turning (too) toxic. They never had much money, but they were pretty decent people (as long as you didn't threat their turf or the people who lived there).

[DigoDragon]

I also think that the whole "this won't even cover our expenses" thinking is backwards. Clearly your expenses are too high, then.

I think the only runner that might have a legit claim to that statement is the team rigger after the party gets his van shot to hell. Then again, I suppose that's where boosting cars comes in.

The most amusing boosting incident I've seen was when the team stole a fire hydrant and bolted it to the sidewalk next to the fancy car of their target hit. So then they boosted a tow truck and towed the car away. The hacker left a forged parking ticket for their target with an address to pick up the car.

Poor target walked right into that trap.
Team got a free fancy car out of the job and disassembled it to sell the parts. So that's one way to make a little extra money.



EDIT: In further news, get off my lawn, you damn kids. :smallbiggrin:

That sounds like a "little guy fighting against the megacorps" kind of thing to me. :smallbiggrin: I do like to play my games that way. A team of mistifts trying to stick it to 'The Corp Man' as it were.



Just because the setting might be dystopian, doesn't mean that the player characters have to be a bunch of horrible people;

I quite agree. Its just my players like being the altruistic heroes. I've been in other groups where everyone was a cut-throat jerk and the job still gets done. Every group has a different style. Personally, I like playing the altruistic type too.

[LibraryOgre]

That sounds like a "little guy fighting against the megacorps" kind of thing to me. :smallbiggrin: I do like to play my games that way. A team of mistifts trying to stick it to 'The Corp Man' as it were.


#gpoy

Warning: Giant picture
http://thesecondempire.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/up_house.jpg


I quite agree. Its just my players like being the altruistic heroes. I've been in other groups where everyone was a cut-throat jerk and the job still gets done. Every group has a different style. Personally, I like playing the altruistic type too.

I find the real problem comes when you've got a mix. When some people are, if not altruistic, at least not out to actively screw people over... then you've got one or two guys whose sole purpose is to mess with other people.

Everyone uses non-lethal weapons? He uses a coup de gras. You try to keep the security guard out of trouble? He buys them tickets out of the country and manufactures evidence that his wife was cheating.

No, not kidding about that.

[Vknight]

I generally make it obvious many people are suffering and poor.
But the wage slaves live around Squatter-Middle depending on their job, location, and living costs(Say they split the apartment between 2-3 people)

I see it this way, the corps want Shadowrunners but at the same time don't want the whole of the populations turning towards crime so they throw just enough scraps to let those people under them have slightly better then most of the criminals.
And working ones way up the ladder can make it so the person can further themselves. Its a stick+carrot, keep them running which attracts enough of the population to have the labor source needed for the corps to operate, get scientists, guinea pigs, security, etc.
Feed them enough that they could sell you out but then offer them better rewards to sell out the guy whose stealing information.

The idea of keeping them in a constant dismal lifestyle no matter their choice of career reduces their numbers enough that it would negatively effect profits; and in the end each corp is about the nuyen in the end.

[DigoDragon]

#gpoy

Heh heh, yeah, it's like that. :smallbiggrin:



I find the real problem comes when you've got a mix. When some people are, if not altruistic, at least not out to actively screw people over... then you've got one or two guys whose sole purpose is to mess with other people.

Ugh. Yeah, I have run games with a group like that far too often. I used to have this player was a real decent guy and got alone swell with the other players, but if we ever played Shadowrun, he *always* played the nastiest character at the table.

Maybe that's how he learned to play, but it was jarring when everyone else was trying to play nice as a team. One time that player couldn't make it to a session, so the team street sam declared "Quick, let's go find a burning orphanage to save!"



I see it this way, the corps want Shadowrunners but at the same time don't want the whole of the populations turning towards crime

I figure most of the poor populous doesn't have the skills or the drive to turn to the shadows. Mugging random strangers on the street is one thing, but I imagine you needsa certain amount of bravado and insanity to do what runners do.
But yeah, stick-and-carrot games are probably common.


Here's a thought; Given the game takes place in the future (2050s-70s) have any groups come up with new cultural fluff for TV/music/internet memes/etc.?

Like, in my campaigns the group came up with a Techno-Country music genre and the most famous singer from that is "Johnny Nuyen". There's an ork boy band called "Occam's Razors", and my personal favorite was this continuing trid series I invented called "Gettysburg 2099" (about Earth's first interstellar colony undergoing a civil war).

[comicshorse]

Just because the setting might be dystopian, doesn't mean that the player characters have to be a bunch of horrible people; you can have a very meaningful and fun game if you have the players as a group of rather altruistic people who are more like modern Robin Hoods and try to protect their neighbourhood or go after a particularly vile opponent, like insect spirits or groups like Tamanous. Well, especially in a rather unpleasant setting, you can actually make the fact that the professional criminals are about the most altruistic and helpful people around a meaningful part of the grimness of the setting.
I remember a game waaay back in second edition where we played a gang/initiation group of Ki-Adepts and urban shamans who tried to keep their little part of the barrens from turning (too) toxic. They never had much money, but they were pretty decent people (as long as you didn't threat their turf or the people who lived there).

Ki-Adepts ?


Here's a thought; Given the game takes place in the future (2050s-70s) have any groups come up with new cultural fluff for TV/music/internet memes/etc.?

'When Mages explode' reality show of amusing(?) clips of magical accidents
'Jenkins: Orc Detective' police procedural with the added twist that the hero spends as much time combatting racism against him as an orc as investigating crimes
In an old campiagn the female Physical Adept used her appearance in 'Euphoria versus the masters of the Hive'(see the 'Queen Euphoria ' campaign) into a minor career as a martial arts action star and managed to get a Modesty Blaise film made that was popular enough to spawn sequel

[Daremonai]

That's just what they called adepts in earlier versions (do they still call them "physical adepts"/physads, or has that gone now too?)

[Rhynn]

Ki-Adepts ?

That appears to be the German term for physical adepts. Old editions of Shadowrun were translated to a bunch of languages. (Including Finnish.)

[Black Jester]

We had a few unique brands for shadowrun, like Behemoth Beer (sold only in oversized buckets and marketed to trolls), victory cigarettes and gin (the very cheapest brand around, based on the generic brands in 1984), Longporc! (a human meat flavored energy drink) and its German rival product Wurstwasser (basically the same, only more extreme, because in Shadowrun, everything is more extreme in Germany).

For entertainment and stuff, we usually had the basic assumption, that pretty much all official stuff is bland, dull and based on escapism, with little substance or complexity, and that the exchangeability of programs, shows and actors was basically a running gag (up to the point where a dead or inconveniently lost actor of any of the more popular shows will be replaced with an exact double within 24 hours thanks to the wonders of plastic surgery), and that actors usually wear personafix chips of the characters they play with enforced dialogue added to the mix anyway, so that they are basically talent-free by default.
It is a bit different with SimSinn products, but not by a large margin.

Non-underground music is basically the same: The whole acoustics are solely created by computers anyway, the "artists" are nothing but eye candy to give a human face to the whole charade. Everyone of them is utterly exchangeable and dull.
Underground music is a bit more lifelike (and there is a relevant overlap of actual underground artists who become popular enough to well, become public figures), but in that case, at my table the term Cyberpunk pretty much defines narrows down what kind of music is appropriate for the game.

[comicshorse]

That's just what they called adepts in earlier versions (do they still call them "physical adepts"/physads, or has that gone now too?)

Oh I thought they'd always been called Physical Adepts/physads



That appears to be the German term for physical adepts. Old editions of Shadowrun were translated to a bunch of languages. (Including Finnish.)

Ah that makes sense. Thanks

[DigoDragon]

'When Mages explode' reality show of amusing(?) clips of magical accidents

That is an awesome show concept.
Might be the first reality show I'd watch. :smallbiggrin:



Longporc! (a human meat flavored energy drink) and its German rival product Wurstwasser (basically the same, only more extreme, because in Shadowrun, everything is more extreme in Germany).

Hilarious stuff! I always thought Germany was pretty extreme too.


One GM I had used to record himself doing Megacorp commercials (using old 50s/60s jingles) and he'd play them during downtime or as an ice breaker before the session officially started. He had a way of capturing that dark humor from commercials found in Robocop. It really fit.

[Rhynn]

He had a way of capturing that dark humor from commercials found in Robocop. It really fit.

The commercials and news clips are probably my favorite part of that movie, and are perfecy cyberpunk material. I think that sort of stuff is great for setting the tone.

I think that, as a lover of old-school random tables, I am now compelled to start compiling three for Shadowrun: Random Television/Tri-D Show, Random Sim, and Random BTL ...

Edit:
I love how much a succinct description of media can say (from CP2020's Home of the Brave):
"MOVIE-Drama; 3 hrs. *****
"All This, and Rich Too!" (2011) Allison Hernandez-Quinn is superb in this dramatization of the General Motors advertisement. George Valentine."

[Lord Raziere]

Hi umm…. I think I need some 4th 20th anniversary help.

I'm basically making an orc technomancer. long story short, I made him for one php, but it didn't even start, so I ported him over to the new interest thread hoping that this one will take off.

and basically his concept is he is both a combat guy and a technomancer guy. but apparently he is suppose to be more specialized because they keep saying I need to either be technomancer who grows into a better combat type or a combat type or who grows into a technomancer. and I just can't decide and remake my build for either cause I conceptualized him as a guy who was already both, who blended combat and technomancy already into something cohesive.

and problem is I just can't figure out how to remake the character into something good for Shadowrun, or even if its not good. I….just don't know really. which is why I am asking for help. here is his sheet:


Personal Data (0/400 BP)
Name: Galtan Scallard
Primary Alias: Cyberfang
Metatype: Ork (20 BP)
Ethnicity: none
Age: 24
Sex: Male

Positive Qualities (35 BP total)
Technomancer (5 BP)
Ambidextrous (5 BP)
Quick Healer (10 BP)
Toughness (10 BP)
Obscure (5 BP)

Negative Qualities: (-35 BP Total)
Wanted (10)
Poor Self Control, Combat Monster (10)
Sensitive System (15)

Total Karma:
Current Karma:
Street Cred:
Notoriety:

Attributes (170 BP total)
Body: 4
Agility: 4 (30 BP)
Reaction: 3 (20 BP)
Strength: 4

Charisma: 3 (20 BP)
Intuition: 5 (40 BP)
Logic: 4 (30 BP)
Willpower: 3 (20 BP)

Second Attributes
Total Edge: 1
Current Edge: 1
Essence: 6
Resonance: 5 (40 BP)

Initiative: 8
Initiative Passes:
Matrix Initiative: 8
Astral Initiative:

Skills (100 BP)
Active:
Cracking Skill Group: 3 (30 BP)
Tasking Skill Group: 2 (20 BP)
Pistols: 3 (12 BP)
Demolitions: 3 (12 BP)
Infiltration: 3 (12 BP)
Con: 3 (12 BP)

Knowledge: (27 skill points)
Corporate Matrix Security Systems: 4
Data Havens: 3
Operating Systems: 3
Ork Culture: 3
Matrix Theory: 3

Language:
Native Language: English (leetspeak +2)
Japanese: 2 (2 BP)
Mandarin: 2
Cantonese: 2
Or'zet: 2

Core Combat Info
Primary Armor: (6/4)

Primary Ranged Weapon
Colt America L36
Dam: 4P AP:- Mode: SA RC:- Ammo: 11

Primary Melee Weapon
Unarmed
Reach:- Dam: 2S AP:-

Condition Monitor
Physical Damage
-1: 3
-2: 3
-3: 3
-4: 3
-5: 3
-6: 3

Stun Damage
-1: 3
-2: 3
-3: 3
-4: 3

Resources: 4655/10,000 nuyen (2 BP)
ID/Lifestyle/Currency
Primary Lifestyle: Low (2000 nuyen)
Nuyen: 400 + 4655
Licenses: Fake SIN: John Smith, Fake Gun License
Fake IDs/Related Lifestyles/Funds/Licenses:
Fake SIN: Jang Si Thai

Gear
2 Colt America L36's (300 nuyen)
Lined Coat (700 Nuyen)
(1st) Fake SIN 1 (1000 Nuyen)
Fake Gun License (100 Nuyen)
(2nd) Fake SIN 1 (1000 Nuyen)
Tag Eraser (150 Nuyen)
Glasses 1 w/ Flare Compensation (75 Nuyen)
Chisel (20 Nuyen)

Contacts (12 BP)
Fixer: 3 connection/3 loyalty
Street Doc: 3 Connection/ 3 loyalty

Tradition: Cyberadept

Complex Forms (56 BP)
Free, Biofeedback: 3
Decrypt: 5
Stealth: 5
Spoof: 5
Black Hammer: 5
Analyze: 5
Browse: 5
Data Search: 4
Edit: 5
Armor: 5
Attack: 5
Exploit: 4
Sniffer: 3




Personality:
Direct, boisterous and possessed with a dark humor, he nonetheless has a keen mind that is constantly reading the situation and trying to figure out what to do next in the most expedient manner he can, tending towards the practical and pragmatic.

Description:
He has a blue mohawk, with big blue shades over his eyes. He wears all black clothing including a long coat, over his stocky form, with two big fangs jutting out from his lower jaw

Backstory:
He grew up on the streets, to a low-income Ork family whose father taught him to defend himself amidst a harsh uncaring world. He was one of the smarter ones, and did hacking jobs for the local gangs to help protect his family and to earn money through illicit activities since he was a child. As he became older, he got into brawls and firefights more and no was just a hacker, but a fighter for his family- anything to keep them safe, for they were his light in a dark world.

However then the Crash 2.0 came. He was one of the hackers who was exposed to the Matrix when it crashed and gained Technomancer powers because of it. He was confused and dazed at first, and thought he could use this new ability. However, when people began their technomancer witch hunts to try and kill them all. He knew he could not stay with his family anymore, knowing that if they were caught up in the extermination, he would never forgive himself.

So he bid farewell to his family, knowing that he was keeping them safe by staying away from them. So he went far away, to another city to start his life over, sticking to more physical jobs until the Technomancer witch hunts died down…mostly. If the job paid well enough, he would use whatever abilities he had at hand to carry it out. Eventually he would come to be known as Cyberfang among the local community, known for his tendency to aggressively hack his targets to get the jobs done.


so yeah, I'm just confused….is it good? bad? can I keep this concept or will it have to be changed more towards technomancy or combat or what?

[Rhynn]

It's an SR4E problem; 400 BP are very little to work with, so you have to specialize, hard. You're not going to get a well-rounded character no matter how hard you try, really.

You really should have the Cracking and Tasking groups at 4 (the maximum at character creation), but even that doesn't make you great; having the individual skills at ratings of 4-6 might be better. But then you're left with pretty much no points for combat or stealth (although taking a single weapon skill at a high rating is easy). Right now, your primary skills (Tasking group) are at a shockingly low 2 (a big no-no for any character), and your critical secondaries (Cracking group) are at 3.

Your attributes are also very spread out an "even," meaning you're not particularly good at any one thing.

Both of these issues will weaken your performance at anything you do. If the GM is expecting focused characters, you won't be up to the challenges you're likely to face.

Quick Healer, Toughness, and Ambidexterity seem pretty useless for your build. You're not focused on combat, so you don't want to use two weapons since you won't really benefit from it anyway. The other two just aren't very good.

You can benchmark yourself against the fairly unoptimized example archetypes. You're nowhere near the equivalent of the Street Samurai or even the Sprawl Ganger in a fight, and a technomancer generally has better things to do in a fight than shoot at peopel anyway. You're actually not that much worse at being a technomancer than the archetype, which makes me wonder where they put his points... (Attributes, looks like.)

Also, lack of wired reflexes pretty much disqualifies you from pulling real weight in a fight, especially in SR4 with the "hard" IPs.

[LibraryOgre]

Here's a thought; Given the game takes place in the future (2050s-70s) have any groups come up with new cultural fluff for TV/music/internet memes/etc.?

Like, in my campaigns the group came up with a Techno-Country music genre and the most famous singer from that is "Johnny Nuyen". There's an ork boy band called "Occam's Razors", and my personal favorite was this continuing trid series I invented called "Gettysburg 2099" (about Earth's first interstellar colony undergoing a civil war).

Shadowbeat. (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/108433/)

Shadowbeat. (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/108433/)

Shadowbeat. (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/108433/)

It talks about music, trid, simsense. How they work, what they show. You want a California Hot? It's a simsense with some of the gain controls turned off. Not quite a BTL, where the gains are amped through the roof, but a bigger experience that a regular simchip.

Anyone else remember the rocker archetype from 1st edition? You want to know how popular your rocker is? There you go. Buy it like lifestyle.

[TheCountAlucard]

"Friggin' Chicken! You'll swear it's the best!"

"Man, that is some good fu-err, I mean, friggin' chicken!" :smallbiggrin:

One of my old characters was a Face who made a career as a B-movie trideo actor, usually in movies about shadowruns. Things got awkward when the runs proved to be based off true stories, and he ended up meeting the team the movie had portrayed.

(Naturally, they were nothing like the movie: the grim-'n'-gritty human mage he'd portrayed was an elf; the rigger in the movie was a Bust-A-Move!, when the real-life rigger was an ork with a stutter; about the only things the movie got right were the details of how the run was done, and that turned out to be the result of a free spirit writing it.)

[DigoDragon]

but apparently he is suppose to be more specialized because they keep saying I need to either be technomancer who grows into a better combat type or a combat type or who grows into a technomancer.

Echoing what Rhynn said, you probably want to focus on being a technomancer. Though if you really want to still shoot something, you could always buy a small drone, install a decent weapon, and then either remote control it, or compile a sprite to operate it for you.

It may not be efficient at killing, but it can help lay some cover fire for the big guy on your team.

[Black Jester]

Tomorow, we begin a new old Shadowrun campaign (with the only useful limitation: only books published by FASA count as legitimate source, so basically most of the system's and setting's decline will be ignored. I am positively excited!

[Kaun]

Man, made a post then got busy as heck for a few days.


This is excellent and correct, IMO. While different people will have different approaches, I think that in the setting by-the-book, shadowrunners are not consummate professionals chosen for their ability to pull the job off without a hitch. Teams like that exist, but they are tied to the megacorps. Shadowrunners are dirtbags chosen not for their skill, but for their expendability. While you usually (not always!*) want a group that will pull off its objective, you're more concerned with deniability. You wouldn't use shadowrunners for jobs that absolutely must go off without a hitch; you'd use them for jobs where you don't mind if they fail and cause a lot of destruction, where that may even be a sort of secondary objective. They didn't extract the scientist, but they shot up the lab? Good enough!

I will need to keep this in mind for my next SR game. Making sure my players create Shadowrunners, wort's and all.

[DigoDragon]

Making sure my players create Shadowrunners, wort's and all.

The worts are the best part in my opinion. I love the quirks a Johnson gets when they put a team together. One of my favorite characters was a child actor who never found a break in the biz after he became an adult. He had a bunch of acting and disguise skills that applied pretty well to being a runner.

...except he was a total ham kind of actor.


How often to runners in your groups utilize disguises? Despite the large number of B&E jobs my team gets, most of them don't think to even cover their faces with a simple mask.

[Kaun]

The worts are the best part in my opinion. I love the quirks a Johnson gets when they put a team together. One of my favorite characters was a child actor who never found a break in the biz after he became an adult. He had a bunch of acting and disguise skills that applied pretty well to being a runner.

...except he was a total ham kind of actor.


How often to runners in your groups utilize disguises? Despite the large number of B&E jobs my team gets, most of them don't think to even cover their faces with a simple mask.

My players generally use disguises and masks and stuff.

They tend to over prepare for minor elements in a run and then forget about major ones.

For example, they will spend ages trying to figure out if the security guard has a set patrol pattern when doing his perimeter check but they won't come up with an exit strategy for their B&E at all.

[DigoDragon]

They tend to over prepare for minor elements in a run and then forget about major ones.

My group does that too. The job goes smoothly until it's time to leave. Then the collateral starts. This is usually where 90% of the PCs in my games get killed in a mission. :smalltongue:

Sadly, hackers in my group are also among the shortest lived characters too. Most PCs who play a hacker seem to ignore online stealth. They'll just brute force their way through the system and touch everything until security sends a bunch of IC after them. I dunno why that is.

Is there just something about being a hacker that you have to blindly hack EVERYTHING within range?

[Tehnar]

The problem is that the mechanics don't support the part time runners lifestyle. Gear is expensive, and you can live a long time off your starting gear if you were to sell it.

Even worse is that cars and other **** is easy to steal or kill someone for. Runners are not going to risk their life infiltrating a corp facility for a measly 2-3k nuyen.

That is not to say you can't even make it so shadowrunners feel the economy. A proper run takes a lot of resources to pull off. Fake SINs, bribes, specialized equipment, etc. Also big 'runs are a once in 2-3 months deal, during which there are lifestyle costs to pay.

If you have a big run that pays 15-20k per runner once every three months, then after you take care of expenses you could only be left with less then 5k profit after those 3 months, which is not a lot compared to how much some gear costs.

[Kaun]

Sadly, hackers in my group are also among the shortest lived characters too. Most PCs who play a hacker seem to ignore online stealth. They'll just brute force their way through the system and touch everything until security sends a bunch of IC after them. I dunno why that is.

Is there just something about being a hacker that you have to blindly hack EVERYTHING within range?

The guy who loved to play a matrix specialist in my group is the other way. While he still try's to hack 90% of everything he is paranoid as balls, it can get tedious some times watching him navigate a system.


The problem is that the mechanics don't support the part time runners lifestyle.

But that's the thing... they do.. if you sell the setting right.


Gear is expensive, and you can live a long time off your starting gear if you were to sell it.

you would only get 10 - 20% of the value of that gear if sold after character creation if my memory serves me correctly. But it has been a while since i read the books and i don't have them handy.



Even worse is that cars and other **** is easy to steal or kill someone for. Runners are not going to risk their life infiltrating a corp facility for a measly 2-3k nuyen.

In Shadowrun you are risking your life driving to the stuffer shack for a pack of smokes and a soycaf. If you don't push the Dystopian elements of the game none of it makes sense. Every time your runner sets a foot outside his safe house he has to worry about gang violence, hate groups, terrorists, trigger happy corp security, crooked cops who don't like paper work, organ traffickers, organised crime groups, eco activists, nut job toxic shamans and so on... and that's before you even add in starvation and disease.

Your runners risk their lives every day anyway. At least when they risk it infiltrating a corp facility there is the chance of a pay check at the end of it.


A proper run takes a lot of resources to pull off.

I don't think this statement is true at all. If your runners try to do every operation like they are in a mission impossible movie then yeah, they are probably going to blow their budget. Runners are the cheap and nasty option for the corps. As a runner if your not making any money on your run's then you need to cut out the unnecessary fat and start relying on your skills and imagination to get the job done.

If your plan is to expensive then re think it.

If your blowing tons of money on ammo but you are not being paid to kill people then you are wasting money.

If you can't afford to loose the drone then don't put it at risk unless you have no other choice.

[Rhynn]

I don't think this statement is true at all. If your runners try to do every operation like they are in a mission impossible movie then yeah, they are probably going to blow their budget. Runners are the cheap and nasty option for the corps. As a runner if your not making any money on your run's then you need to cut out the unnecessary fat and start relying on your skills and imagination to get the job done.

Seriously. Most gear is reusable, and why (and how) are you burning SINs on every run?

The 'runners aren't the elite corp teams. If the corps want to send in elites, they have them (SR 5E gives corp elites skills and skill groups at ratings 6-9!). They use 'runners when they want cheap, expendable, and extra-deniable.

[HMS Invincible]

Seriously. Most gear is reusable, and why (and how) are you burning SINs on every run?

The 'runners aren't the elite corp teams. If the corps want to send in elites, they have them (SR 5E gives corp elites skills and skill groups at ratings 6-9!). They use 'runners when they want cheap, expendable, and extra-deniable.

The real question is, how paranoid are you, how paranoid is the GM, and how much do you get paid per week of running?
Is it a simple smash and grab where a fast car and a spray of bullets gets you in and out? Or do you have to case the joint, make false identities, and all that fun jazz? After you get out, do you disappear or do you head straight back to your day job?

Depending on how your GM reacts, you're either gonna be lost amongst the paperwork, or the GM is gonna set in motion crap that rolls you. Think a SIN is expensive? How about losing your lifestyle and all the fancy guns/ammo you left at your safehouse?

What if your GM gives out dangerous jobs that pay well? Then it makes sense to be super paranoid because paying well = suicide job. Only the most dangerous corporations have stuff worth several months of luxury lifestyle.

Here's a quick example of how a job can change depending on the GM. Say you case a joint, and then use a stolen car as a getaway vehicle. If the GM is anal retentive, then he tries to pin the stolen car to your SIN. If he wants to, he could start doing putting two and two together to put a bounty on your comlink. After the job is done, does the GM make the corp you robbed put out extra resources for revenge?

So then the question becomes, how much work do you need to do before the GM is satisfied? The best thing to do is to have a plan that has an intentional weakness but you already secretly planned for. This takes care of the GM's urge to "challenge" players. You're already taking risks rolling dice, why take more? All that said, I'd hold off on taking jobs that require burning a high quality SIN, or even a low quality one if I could help it.

[Kaun]

A lot of this confused me, i couldn't really lock down the point you were making in many of these statements, but heck, i will have a crack at responding anyway.


The real question is, how paranoid are you, how paranoid is the GM, and how much do you get paid per week of running?
Is it a simple smash and grab where a fast car and a spray of bullets gets you in and out? Or do you have to case the joint, make false identities, and all that fun jazz? After you get out, do you disappear or do you head straight back to your day job?

Depending on how your GM reacts, you're either gonna be lost amongst the paperwork, or the GM is gonna set in motion crap that rolls you.

Ok if your GM is out to nail you, you will get nailed... not much you can do about it so moving on.

If you are trying to run the shadows and keep a SINer job going on the side then eventually one is going to make you loose the other. It's inevitable in my mind, unless you are in some sort of Superman/Clark situation where people find out and then die an episode or two after.


Think a SIN is expensive? How about losing your lifestyle and all the fancy guns/ammo you left at your safehouse?

Its not often i see a Runner with an actual SIN, most players seem to have their actually SIN deleted or didn't have one to begin with. I have seen a few Runners played with criminal SIN's to make things interesting. Fake SIN's is another thing, but in saying that. My theory is quantity beats quality. You may need a good fake SIN or two for certain situations, but a hand full of cheap crappy ones can be amazingly useful for a lot of the work that needs doing.

Most automated systems won't put a SIN under too much evaluation, they will tag it, add it to their log and move on. If some one figures out it was fake later on who cares.

Moral of the story is don't waste a good fake SIN on low key work.

And lifestyles is another one i never bank on. Its a dangerous line of work shadowrunning, its volatile so when things are good live it up but always have a bit stashed away for when they go bad again. Here are a few tips with protecting your life style;

Don't take your work home with you. Sure keep a gun or two in your house but don't turn the place into an armory. That's what stash spots and safe houses are for. Don't use it as a meeting point, don't lay low their if people are looking for you.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Get a couple of nice pads around the place rather then one really nice one.

Don't **** on your land lord. If your building is run by a corp, avoid work that targets them. If its run by an independent, look after the chummer.

Keep your money in a reputable shadowbank. It will cost you but it will be harder for the Corps to target.

Leave some equipment stashes with a few contacts or friends. Doesn't have to be much but a fire arm, a basic comlink with a fake SIN, a change of cloths or two and some med's can come in really handy in a pinch.


What if your GM gives out dangerous jobs that pay well? Then it makes sense to be super paranoid because paying well = suicide job. Only the most dangerous corporations have stuff worth several months of luxury lifestyle.

Here's a quick example of how a job can change depending on the GM. Say you case a joint, and then use a stolen car as a getaway vehicle. If the GM is anal retentive, then he tries to pin the stolen car to your SIN.

Which SIN? If it was a hot run with weapons live was i even running one? Or if i had to was it just another crappy one that would quickly show up as being fake?

Does he want to run a check for DNA when the vehicle turns up? Go nuts. for a hand full of ¥ at the local hospital or body shop you can get your hands on a few liters of medical waste. Throw that over the interior before you burn it and your apples.


If he wants to, he could start doing putting two and two together to put a bounty on your comlink.

Dump it? or get it cleaned by your groups hacker.



After the job is done, does the GM make the corp you robbed put out extra resources for revenge?

This is possible, depends on the corp, depends on the run i guess. But never forget the golden rule of shadowrun... everything is for sale.... so make a deal.


So then the question becomes, how much work do you need to do before the GM is satisfied? The best thing to do is to have a plan that has an intentional weakness but you already secretly planned for. This takes care of the GM's urge to "challenge" players.

I don't think "challenging" players is an urge, it is text book GMing. Play a game where your characters are never challenged, see how fun it is after a few sessions.

But once again, if your GM is an ass, then your gonna get screwed no matter what. In this case, take the money you would have spent on fake SIN and other such stuff and spend it on high powered weapons, ammo, body Armour and explosives, lots and lots of explosives.


All that said, I'd hold off on taking jobs that require burning a high quality SIN, or even a low quality one if I could help it.

Solid advice, and don't kill anybody unless your paid to. No point turning a b&e into a murder unless you have too.

[Tehnar]

Seriously. Most gear is reusable, and why (and how) are you burning SINs on every run?

The 'runners aren't the elite corp teams. If the corps want to send in elites, they have them (SR 5E gives corp elites skills and skill groups at ratings 6-9!). They use 'runners when they want cheap, expendable, and extra-deniable.

Runners go in when you need deniability. You can't send in your corp team to raid another corps secret lab. You also send in runners into the difficult, near suicide jobs. That your corp team won't do (or is a major waste of resources if they fail).

I'm talking about a normal level campaign, where you start as a normal runner (400 BP in 4A). Where you can start with 250k easily. So during runs where your SIN gets compromised (1k per rating), your car gets shot up / tagged by police (10k minimum), your drones get destroyed (3k+ upwards) then getting paid chump change (on average less then 2k) is silly and frustrating. When you add ammo costs, medical bills and

2k is basically just enough to make ends meet and is useful for a couple of first runs, where the runners get a reputation. And those runs should be something easy to pull off, something that shouldn't involve violence.

[DigoDragon]

Ok if your GM is out to nail you, you will get nailed... not much you can do about it so moving on.

I was in a group where one player really nailed not only himself, but half the team. It was a protection job gone wrong (we measure how badly a mission went south by the body count. This was a 6-body job). The insult to injury was that one player blogged about the mission on a public forum, and even uploaded videos he recorded of the fight.
Half the team got fingered by that evidence. :smalltongue:


One trick I really learned to make use of as a GM is Contacts. Ensure the players invest in contacts. For me, contacts are a Win-Win. It's a win for the players because they have "go-to" people for info, equipment, safehouses, etc. It's a win for the GM because contacts can be used to give players info and rumors to steer the team down the right path to a good fun game.

As a player, one of my favorite contacts to buy is the bribe-able cop. The cop is handy for getting the word on the street from the law's perspective. I slip him some nuyen under the table, he lets me know what Lone Star is up to. It saved the team a world of hurt once when we were hired to kidnap someone. We knew the target had a bodyguard. We didn't know the bodyguard was an ex-marine with some hidden combat reflex cyberware and a rap sheet that uses the word "gun violence" as a comma.

[HMS Invincible]

What we really have is expectations and assumptions. If we have the expectation that a run will be easy, we can just handwave a lot of the nitty gritty detail beyond "I have the evidence scrubbed from the scene by X, Y, and Z things/people". And then there are the assumptions, are the guards all Sherlock expoxies or are they Chief Wiggum from The Simpsons? This doesn't even take into account the payouts. If I took a high lifestyle, and all my other party members took low(or worse) then I'll be pushing for bigger scores just to pay the bills. Bigger payouts mean more dangerous missions, which means more effort needed.

As an example, my last run did a job that offered 30k per member for a month long mission. After all was said and done, we got 16k each, only after not paying a runner who had died(taking his share of the loot). For everyone else, they made a cool 11k-15k nuyen, but I only made 6k because I had to cough up 10k for a high lifestyle. Not really related, but I wasn't sure if I was being unreasonable to push for bigger runs because I had higher expenses.

[Dimers]

Rules question, 4th ed. I don't have the Anniversary book but an answer that references it is fine.

Are you allowed to break up skill groups during character creation? For example, I want to be athletic in general but be able to climb like a fiend. Can I pay 20 BP for Athletics Skill Group 2, then spend 12 more BP to make Climbing 5?

What about breaking up a skill group with a specialization? Firearms 1, Pistols still just 1, but Revolvers 3, paying 10 BP for the group and 2 more BP for one specialization?

I realize that if I did so, I could never again advance the group together. Not a problem. I just like saving some BP during character creation -- and I specialize all over the place, because to me it makes the character more interesting and realistic.

[Kaun]

As an example, my last run did a job that offered 30k per member for a month long mission. After all was said and done, we got 16k each, only after not paying a runner who had died(taking his share of the loot). For everyone else, they made a cool 11k-15k nuyen, but I only made 6k because I had to cough up 10k for a high lifestyle.

Not really related, but I wasn't sure if I was being unreasonable to push for bigger runs because I had higher expenses.

You are being unreasonable lol.. but only so far as the lifestyle is an unrelated expense. If you used it in the run then sure, but otherwise its just a choice your character makes on how to spend their cash.

The problem with the life style thing is it can be hard, with out some solid GMing, to see the return from your investment. I mean realistically the guys in the low life styles would be getting sick more due to the bad climate control and old poorly maintained services. Up all night from disturbances going on in the streets, and suffering from crime a lot more. + a bunch of other stuff.

But unless the GM takes it into account it all amounts to nothing really. That or try to make use of it more yourself, i guess.

[DigoDragon]

You are being unreasonable lol.. but only so far as the lifestyle is an unrelated expense. If you used it in the run then sure, but otherwise its just a choice your character makes on how to spend their cash.


One GM I worked with replaced lifestyles with Safehouses-- Its the quality of the place you crash at before/after a mission (like a base of operations). A good safehouse is in a quiet neighborhood where the local gang is paid off to keep prying eyes away, you have good matrix signals and room to set up your equipment, and there's a garage to hide that stolen van you were using. A bad safehouse is in the slums, it doesn't protect you much from anything, and it's likely some ghouls will rip off the radio from that nice van of yours to hock while you were changing the oil.

[HMS Invincible]

Now we're getting into GM preferences and roleplaying. Do you like showing off and taking advantage of all the wealth you spent? Or does the handwaving allow you to shave off 8k-10k from your expenses with little downside other than eating a lot of McSoy burgers off the value menu.

If the pay doesn't rise, (or inversely, the runs per month doesn't increase) I'll consider downgrading my lifestyle to save nuyen for a fancy piece of cyberware. We're all new to shadowrun, except me + 1 other guy, so the GM is trying to play by the book. Keyword trying.

I'd feel bad pushing the GM to essentially punish the other players for lifestyle choices, especially when they're new to the game. How can I make use of the high life? It's not luxury, but it might as well be compared to everyone else.
The only benefit I can think of with a high lifestyle is the lower banking fees. One thing we discussed was if receiving large anonymous payments would impact our fake SINs. If you have a lifestyle, does it matter if you get wired a bunch of money? How should the GM rule because there's nothing in the book about the banking system other than credstick vs swiss bank account.

[LibraryOgre]

Rules question, 4th ed. I don't have the Anniversary book but an answer that references it is fine.

Are you allowed to break up skill groups during character creation? For example, I want to be athletic in general but be able to climb like a fiend. Can I pay 20 BP for Athletics Skill Group 2, then spend 12 more BP to make Climbing 5?


I believe that is against the RAW, but I would allow it, myself.

For reference, page 84 of the Anniversary edition has "Skill groups may not be broken up into individual skills for further improvement and specializations may not be taken for skill group skills at character creation—although, as always, individual gamemasters are free to allow this option."

The regular 4e makes no such statement.

[DigoDragon]

One thing we discussed was if receiving large anonymous payments would impact our fake SINs. If you have a lifestyle, does it matter if you get wired a bunch of money?

I've never considered that a big deal unless there's a reason to suspect the SIN itself. As long as the banking system believes the SIN is genuine, then hey, the bank would like to hold your money for you (and collect interest on it). :smallsmile:

[The Random NPC]

So I was trying to create a kind of Chunky Salsa build, and I thought it would be awesome if I could finagle a way to cast a spell that created a box to abuse that rule. I came across the Positive quality Spell knack, but I was very disappointed. You get the ability to cast a single spell, and in exchange, you can never get any augmentation, or increase your magic score from one. Sure it's only 5 BP but you get almost all the drawbacks of magic with almost none of the advantages. Is there something I'm missing or is it as bad as I think?

[Dimers]

I believe that is against the RAW, but I would allow it, myself.

For reference, page 84 of the Anniversary edition has "Skill groups may not be broken up into individual skills for further improvement and specializations may not be taken for skill group skills at character creation—although, as always, individual gamemasters are free to allow this option."

The regular 4e makes no such statement.

Thankee!

I really gotta get a copy of that book ...

[Kaun]

I've never considered that a big deal unless there's a reason to suspect the SIN itself. As long as the banking system believes the SIN is genuine, then hey, the bank would like to hold your money for you (and collect interest on it). :smallsmile:


Taxation purposes, would be the only thing that might draw attention. They catch a lot of drug dealers by monitoring their bank accounts. Large deposits into their accounts with no visible income always looks dodgy, especially when there has been no tax paid.

[comicshorse]

Hence why its always best to launder large deposits. Remember Al Capone was brought down for tax evasion :smallsmile:

[Kaun]

Hence why its always best to launder large deposits. Remember Al Capone was brought down for tax evasion :smallsmile:

murder is one thing but never screw with a governments money!!!


Seriously though, stick to shadow banks and hope that your GM hand-waves the rest of it.

[LibraryOgre]

Hence why its always best to launder large deposits. Remember Al Capone was brought down for tax evasion :smallsmile:

I had a character, with the Day Job flaw, you also had a sizable amount as an accountant... because his magic biz was cover for his shadowrunning.

[comicshorse]

My last character took as payment for a job for the Gambino's, a legitimate job as an 'astral security consultant' at one of their front casino's to explain his income

[HMS Invincible]

murder is one thing but never screw with a governments money!!!


Seriously though, stick to shadow banks and hope that your GM hand-waves the rest of it.

That's what we ended up doing, but I was curious about it since there was a line about banking services costing money to those with low lifestyles or SINs.

[DigoDragon]

That's what we ended up doing, but I was curious about it since there was a line about banking services costing money to those with low lifestyles or SINs.

I think of it in terms of real-world banking. Nowadays many banks charge fees if you don't have a minimum balance or deposit a certain amount each month. Folks like me with low lifestyles have difficulty making those minimums. Therefore, alternatives like online banks are more appealing as they don't fee us to death, plus some are a bit more anonymous with your info than standard banks. :smalltongue:



Taxation purposes, would be the only thing that might draw attention.

Okay, I agree there is that possibility.

I've never nailed a runner on tax evasion. Sounds like a premise for an interesting mission though. Get a target arrested by falsifying his tax records. Plant wads of credsticks under his matress to incriminate him.



Is there something I'm missing or is it as bad as I think?

I've never used it, but it doesn't seem like much of a value to me.

[druid91]

So, I'm just starting out on Shadowrun 4e, and I'm looking into trying to make a technomancer with a focus on drones.

So, is there anything in particular I should look into? Is this even possible? I just have this wonderful image of an older guy falling asleep in an armchair as he guides helicopters, minidrones, cars and the like for the runner team.

[TheCountAlucard]

The dronomancer isn't just possible, it's pretty freakin' great. Since it's 4e, I suggest grabbing the "More than Metahuman" positive quality - making it a free action to jump into or out of a drone. Back when I was playing my hacker/rigger, multiple IPs meant I could rain full auto death from multiple drones without having to use a Pilot program for any of them. :smalltongue:

Though note that for best results, you're gonna want either a signal tower and ways to beat jamming/noise, or to be in an armored rigger van right next to the action.

(I did both: my armored rigger van had an armored rigger cocoon inside of it, as well as a Signal 8 antenna, and Lifestyle-equivalent amenities, and its outside was chameleon-coated, had an electrical theft-deterrent system, and because why not, A HOVER UPGRADE. It was beautiful.)

[The Random NPC]

I never really got the benefit of More than Metahuman, you only get 1 free action per turn unless you exchange higher actions for them. Yeah, you can free action jump in and us a complex to shoot (or two simples) but you can't do it with multiple drones.

[TheOOB]

So, I'm just starting out on Shadowrun 4e, and I'm looking into trying to make a technomancer with a focus on drones.

So, is there anything in particular I should look into? Is this even possible? I just have this wonderful image of an older guy falling asleep in an armchair as he guides helicopters, minidrones, cars and the like for the runner team.

Drones are likely the best way to play a technomancer, as sprites can be nasty in drones.

That said, I'd avoid technomancers you're first play through. They are kind of hard to play, and you, and your GM, need an intimate knowledge of the matrix and rigging systems for them to work, like you've read the core rulebook and unwired 4 times each kind of knowledge.

[druid91]

Drones are likely the best way to play a technomancer, as sprites can be nasty in drones.

That said, I'd avoid technomancers you're first play through. They are kind of hard to play, and you, and your GM, need an intimate knowledge of the matrix and rigging systems for them to work, like you've read the core rulebook and unwired 4 times each kind of knowledge.

I'm good at reading.

[DigoDragon]

That said, I'd avoid technomancers you're first play through. They are kind of hard to play, and you, and your GM, need an intimate knowledge of the matrix and rigging systems for them to work, like you've read the core rulebook and unwired 4 times each kind of knowledge.

Usually, but there are exceptions. My group figured out how Technos worked before hackers. I don't know if it's something to do with the hacker's gear versus the Techno's more natural ability, but that's how it went with us.

Course my group also tried to figure what happens when you stick a Techno's head in a microwave. :smalltongue:


This might be a simple question:
Say you have a vehicle with both a pilot program and a rigger control unit. A rigger is currently jumped into the vehicle during a chase scene. Now, let's imagine that one of the opponents gets a good shot and kills/incapacitates the rigger (i.e. head shot or something). Is it reasonable that the pilot program is designed to sense a dropped connection and take over driving the vehicle to avoid a crash?

[TheCountAlucard]

Is it reasonable that the pilot program is designed to sense a dropped connection and take over driving the vehicle to avoid a crash?Absolutely, especially considering how modern-day autopilots are going that way.

[HMS Invincible]

In 5th ed. how important is spending points on unarmed combat? The GM caught me and another guy without guns, and it was a grueling session of me tanking bullets for 5 rounds before a guy dropped, and I picked up his gun. The session pretty much ended when I got my hands on a firearm and killed everyone with it.
I was thinking about putting a point or two in unarmed combat and unarmed throwing, but rolling 6-8 dice seems pretty crappy when the opponents get to dodge and soak. I'm a street sam btw.

[TheOOB]

In 5th ed. how important is spending points on unarmed combat? The GM caught me and another guy without guns, and it was a grueling session of me tanking bullets for 5 rounds before a guy dropped, and I picked up his gun. The session pretty much ended when I got my hands on a firearm and killed everyone with it.
I was thinking about putting a point or two in unarmed combat and unarmed throwing, but rolling 6-8 dice seems pretty crappy when the opponents get to dodge and soak. I'm a street sam btw.

It depends. If you're strength isn't terrible, you likely want 1 or 2 points in unarmed, specially if your GM likes to catch you without your guns(which shouldn't happen. If you don't have at least a hold out pistol you did something wrong, even my magicians carry at least three sidearms). Shock gloves are actually a very effective melee weapon as well.

If you want to be good in melee, and expect to be disarmed fairly often, try clubs. You can pretty much always find one somewhere, and they are way better than your fists(unless you're an adept, but unarmed adepts still are not all that great).

[HMS Invincible]

Well it was a really messed up module that he got and made some pretty strange calls.
It's the module where you walk into a gang owned Mcdonalds to find a Mcguffin. Me and the face planned to recon the place by walking in, ordering food and having the face chat up people. Apparently the module has a couple odd things.
1. Metal detector combined with strict rule against any nongang guns.
2. Automated guns that popout + everyone armed with pistols.
3. Triggered event, if any PC attempts to leave bar then a crazy person gets up and starts shooting the ganger. The ganger responds by ordering all the staff and automated guns to shoot the crazy guy + any PCs in the restaurant.
While there were other customers in the Mcdonalds, the module is unclear why the crazy guy event has to happen, and why it occurs only when the PCs try to leave.

We didn't have our hacker with us, so we decided it was easier to walk in after leaving our guns in our car. *at this point, I should have infiltrated into the Mcdonalds, but it felt really odd to break into what is essentially a 3 room building full of staff and customers in full stealth gear.* So what was essentially a Q&A session turned into a gunfight where I fought a bunch of guys with my fists. The DM made a questionable call as well when we tried retreating to our car. He said the car was 5 turns away, not initiative passes, or meters, 5 turns. That left us in the really bad position of 2 guys vs 5 gangers and a pair of automated guns + 1 crazy guy who were all shooting at each other ( mainly the 5 gangers+ automated guns shooting evenly between the crazy guy and the 2 of us.) This was going to occur over 5 turns, so we were gonna get shot at 5-10 times from each gun in the room.

In the after action review, the GM noted we could have picked up the crazy guy's gun after he died, shown up in force with the whole party, or simply stormed the place guns blazing. The reward for this is 500-1000$ per PC depending on how well we did.
We countered that several of those options seemed pretty involved for such a poor reward. All in all, a pretty terrible module, which lead to an interesting question about unarmed combat. The GM admitted the 5 turns to our car was an off the cuff moment, but he refused to change it in the future. It kinda threw me off since it defeated any purpose to running vs walking away.

[Lorsa]

I am probably going to be a player in a Shadowrun campaign that's about to start in a week or so and I was hoping to get some basic advice on what to avoid doing with your character. We're going to play 4th edition it seems and the GM is new to GMing Shadowrun even though he's played it before (only somewhat relevant as I might not be able to trust him to know the pitfalls of the system).

I've found that in almost all systems there are some really bad choices when making your character that you should avoid or else your character is going to suck badly and I was hoping someone could tell me these before I play because they aren't always apparant until you've actually played the system.

[DodgerH2O]

I am probably going to be a player in a Shadowrun campaign that's about to start in a week or so and I was hoping to get some basic advice on what to avoid doing with your character. We're going to play 4th edition it seems and the GM is new to GMing Shadowrun even though he's played it before (only somewhat relevant as I might not be able to trust him to know the pitfalls of the system).

I've found that in almost all systems there are some really bad choices when making your character that you should avoid or else your character is going to suck badly and I was hoping someone could tell me these before I play because they aren't always apparant until you've actually played the system.

I'd argue that if the GM is new and most or all of the players are new it's okay to make really bad choices, most of the fun I have from systems comes before I master them, when everything is new and interesting.

In addition, if you don't know your GM's style, it's really hard to say what would be good or bad choices. Some GMs let PCs carry heavy weaponry around downtown Seattle with no problems. Other GMs require permits for everything more lethal than a taser. Contacts may be invaluable, but if your GM doesn't know how to make them useful you could waste dozens of BPs on interesting contacts that never turn out to do anything for you.

Despite that, some general advice I'd give:
Choose a specialty and focus on being really good at that one thing. Try to have a 'backup' skillset so you're not useless if your specialty is neutralized (a simple example, if you're a close combat specialist, make sure to carry a gun in case you get stuck at range, actually everyone should have a backup firearm and know how to use it.)

The stereotypical roles will surely be covered by someone else responding in more depth than I can, but most parties like to have a "Face" (social skills, the person who knows how to get information and negotiate well), a Matrix user (Hacker/Technomancer), Magic user (Spellcaster with full astral access preferably) and a Combat specialist (Adept or Street Samurai is the typical example). Riggers are often excellent fifth members, and depending on how they're made can serve as backup Matrix or Combat roles.

Work with your other players and the GM to create the group, so you have an idea of how you all will work together. After a few sessions you might realize that it's not working, and that's okay, it comes with playing a new system. Part of Shadowrun's fun (IMHO) is taking a suboptimal party and succeeding anyway, or failing spectacularly and starting over. A good GM can adjust to fit the team. I've had parties with three combat specialists and a rigger, they ran more like an action movie. I had one that was two players, a Mage and a Technomancer, and they were great at infiltration and detective type runs but had to use cleverness rather than combat to win a shootout. The system can handle a wide variety of playstyles.

And finally, if you're really worried about creation mistakes, the pregenerated characters in the 4e core book are pretty decent IIRC. You can't really go wrong picking one of those for your first couple runs.

[Lorsa]

Well, I do know my GM's style in general even if I don't know it in specific to Shadowrun. I know that being perceptive and good at investigating things is going to be useful.

But what I really want to know is if there are any useless attributes or any that are usually much better than the rest and if it's better to spend your points on skills compared to attributes etc etc.

[DodgerH2O]

Well, I do know my GM's style in general even if I don't know it in specific to Shadowrun. I know that being perceptive and good at investigating things is going to be useful.

But what I really want to know is if there are any useless attributes or any that are usually much better than the rest and if it's better to spend your points on skills compared to attributes etc etc.

I'm a big fan of spending as many BPs as possible on physical and mental attributes (200 BP in a 400BP game) and not "maxing out" any of them, it ensures a well-rounded character that has a good base pool of dice regardless of skills. Also do not neglect Edge, especially if learning the game. I'd go for 3 points at least. If you do all that, you won't have a ton of BP left for skills and gear, but having good attributes means you don't need nearly as many points in a skill for it to be reasonably effective and most concepts can do well with as little as 4 ranks in their key skills if they have the attributes to support them.

Certain archetypes "min/max" better than others IMO, Hackers for example can often get by with lower physical attributes (and possibly Charisma) and use the saved BP to max out their skills and starting gear.

Edit: I'd also encourage specializations for non-key skills. For example: If your martial arts-based Adept has a backup pistol, it can make both in-character sense and be good character building to specialize in that type of pistol rather than invest more points in the Pistols skill.

[Lorsa]

How good are adepts really? Isn't it very difficult to get any form of useful abilities without investing like a ton of BP into Magic? How important is IP in the game?

[DodgerH2O]

IP make or break combat, action economy is just so important to turn-based combat systems. It's one of the places I got upset about 4e's changes, in previous editions it was possible (fairly easily, but not really consistently) to get 2 IPs as a complete mundane. For high-level Shadowrun combat you should have a minimum of 2 IPs, preferably 3 or more.

I personally like Adepts a lot, but they eat huge chunks of Karma for advancement (as do all Awakened characters). As nuyen is usually easier to gain than Karma it's probably more efficient in the typical SR game to run a Cyber- and Bioware focused combat character, spending Karma on skills/attributes and nuyen on better cyber, guns, etc.

The thing for me is that realistically it's much easier and cheaper to detect cyberware than magical ability (especially if you've initiated and have Masking). Any really paranoid corp will have a mage on staff, but he can't be everywhere at once. Detection equipment can cover multiple entrances with minimal upkeep quite easily. Also note that Assensing an augmented character can show 'ware, and a wageslave with a datajack will look entirely different than a hardened merc with combat augmentations.

[Lorsa]

I've only been looking through the corebook so far, and I have to say that the character creation system is a bit confusing really. It is sometimes hard to follow exactly what cost what (I'm not sure about langauges still) and how much BP you really need to save to the end thingies.

It seems a bit difficult to make a well-rounded character skillwise though. You're going to be missing a lot I think.

Are there any other books than the corebook that has qualities that I should look into?

And basically what you are saying that if you play an Adept your best bet is to increase Magic to 4 and spend everything on increasing your IP?

[DodgerH2O]

I've only been looking through the corebook so far, and I have to say that the character creation system is a bit confusing really. It is sometimes hard to follow exactly what cost what (I'm not sure about langauges still) and how much BP you really need to save to the end thingies.

It seems a bit difficult to make a well-rounded character skillwise though. You're going to be missing a lot I think.

Language skills count as knowledge skills, you can use the free Knowledge skill BP on languages plus you start with a Native language (which does not have to be the dominant language of your 'runner's home area either.) I wouldn't suggest a well-rounded set of skills, but a focus on one role with maybe a smattering of a backup skill. Look at the skills on the pregenned characters in the core book and you'll see what I'm saying. The combat characters have a social skill or two, the casters can use a gun if needed (albeit poorly), most of them can drive a car or bike reasonably well.


Are there any other books than the corebook that has qualities that I should look into?

The core book works quite well IMO. The appropriate book for your given archetype (Street Magic for casters, Arsenal and Augmentation for cybered characters, etc) will give you more options, but starting out with the core rules keeps things from getting too complicated too early. I don't own all of the books, so can't personally say whether there's power creep or big game-changers from using the expanded rule sets.


And basically what you are saying that if you play an Adept your best bet is to increase Magic to 4 and spend everything on increasing your IP?

For a Combat Focused Adept a Magic of 4 would be a good amount to start with, and 3 PP for Improved Reflexes 2 leaves 1 point for say Killing Hands (close combat) or Improved Ability (for gunslinger adepts) and a half point left for a miscellaneous power. You can level up adept powers, and will eventually want to get as many IP as possible, but starting out 3 is plenty for a dedicated combat character. Adepts don't have to have combat skillsets and roles to contribute to a shadowrunning team.

Again, the pregenerated characters are generally quite functional in performing their roles, and you can look to them for guidelines whenever you're uncertain.

Also keep in mind you're just getting my opinion on the game right now, hopefully once our weekday posters get back you can get other views on your questions. My advice is influenced by my own preferences and experiences GMing, which are often different than those of other experienced players and GMs.

[Lorsa]

Again, the pregenerated characters are generally quite functional in performing their roles, and you can look to them for guidelines whenever you're uncertain.

Many of them seem to lack a Dodge skill. I've always figured that in any game that has a skill like that it would be THE skill to have for anyone that's ever going to be anywhere close to a fight. Even if you're say a social character it's still quite likely someone will shoot at you once in a while (maybe less so if you're just sitting in at home remote controlling stuff).

[DigoDragon]

Choose a specialty and focus on being really good at that one thing. Try to have a 'backup' skillset so you're not useless if your specialty is neutralized.

I'll echo this as well, especially when your primary skillset is combat related and it gets blocked. I had a mage who couldn't get decent damage spells to hit because the enemy we fought had a good counterspell mage. My backup skillset was a shotgun.

"Counterspell this, chummer!" :smallbiggrin:

Also, it never hurts to put some points in stealth/infiltration. I daresay it's the most important skill in Shadowrun. The art of not getting caught can save your life.

[DodgerH2O]

Many of them seem to lack a Dodge skill. I've always figured that in any game that has a skill like that it would be THE skill to have for anyone that's ever going to be anywhere close to a fight. Even if you're say a social character it's still quite likely someone will shoot at you once in a while (maybe less so if you're just sitting in at home remote controlling stuff).

I dunno, I counted about 2/3 of them with Dodge. I'd agree it's a great skill for any shadowrunner, but it requires a Complex Action to go Full Defense, which is how you actually get to use your Dodge skill. This means (unless you have multiple IP) that you're using your whole action for a turn to avoid getting hit. While I highly advise doing this in certain situations (while moving to get behind cover or to an objective like a switch/access panel, or when you see really heavy weaponry pointed your way) it seems to come up less often in the games I've run, and usually you can throw in Edge dice if it's really important. In melee combat you can use your close combat skills to defend and for ranged defense you're usually stuck without Dodge dice anyhow.

I will emphasize that the pregens are generally quite well-made. There's room for optimization in all of them (the noted lack of Dodge, especially in a couple combat-focused roles, several combat characters who only have 1 IP, spell choices for a few of the casters are underwhelming) but they work well for learning the game. If you find you're losing runners to automatic weapons all the time you might decide that a couple (more) points in Dodge is a good idea for your playstyle.

[TheOOB]

I am probably going to be a player in a Shadowrun campaign that's about to start in a week or so and I was hoping to get some basic advice on what to avoid doing with your character. We're going to play 4th edition it seems and the GM is new to GMing Shadowrun even though he's played it before (only somewhat relevant as I might not be able to trust him to know the pitfalls of the system).

I've found that in almost all systems there are some really bad choices when making your character that you should avoid or else your character is going to suck badly and I was hoping someone could tell me these before I play because they aren't always apparant until you've actually played the system.

It's better to be really good at one or two things than kinda good at several

Attributes are better to buy with BP than skills

Every runner should have at least some ranks in pistols, infiltration, etiquette, and perception.

Unless you're some kind of weird dual-wielding adept, pistols shouldn't be your main weapon, and unless your an adept, melee shouldn't be your main combat focus. Automatics and Longarms are super powerful with low investment.

Always carry backup gear

Remember that in SR, he who gets surprise usually wins, failing that he who wins initiative usually wins, failing THAT he who has more IP usually wins(and failing that, he who has better armor usually wins). Keep those in mind when building your combat stats.

[Lorsa]

So is it better to aim for being an Adept and having cool innate powers or are you simply stupid for not buying cyber/bioware? How good are mages in general (and what are they good at)?

[DodgerH2O]

So is it better to aim for being an Adept and having cool innate powers or are you simply stupid for not buying cyber/bioware?

Make whatever type of character you want to roleplay, honestly. As a general rule Adepts start out weaker, require a ton more Karma to advance, but in theory have no upper limit to their Magic score, it just gets horrendously expensive to increase. Cybered characters have at most (a fraction less than) 6 Essence to play with and while cutting edge 'ware can allow you to upgrade, there's only so much you can do.

For the typical Shadowrun group, this difference will never show up. Out of the box, an augmented character will be limited by Availability ratings and thus usually isn't much stronger than an Adept (but my experience is that augmented characters are somewhat stronger given equal amounts of optimization).

I personally just like to play up the fluff of "Low Essence means you're less than human" and so even my Street Samurai usually have 2 or 3 Essence to spare. In 4e there are no rules that your 0.1 Essence character has to be an unfeeling machine, the fluff just somewhat implies it.


How good are mages in general (and what are they good at)?

Mages/Shamans/Whatever (Magicians) are able to bring a variety of abilities to their team. Pretty much any party role they perform using magic can be done by other means (unlike, say, D&D) except for access to the Astral Plane, and countermagic. This is not to say mages aren't unique, but with stealth suits, wireless drones and rocket launchers available, their Invisibility, Clairvoyance and Fireball spells aren't the only way to be invisible, see long distances undiscovered, or blow things up.

The thing is, Magicians can be very very flexible. The spell lists allow for several possible party roles, and then Conjuring summons spirits that can do even more. Shadowrun is all about specialization, but there's minimal cost for say a Combat Mage to learn Heal, Invisibility, or Control Thoughts to gain versatility in other situations. As Awakened characters though, they suffer from the same Karma shortage as Adepts, and will generally progress more slowly than their mundane friends.


Note: The stuff I mentioned earlier about augmented characters being easier than Adepts to detect, etc. isn't really a big deal overall. The typical Shadowrun team doesn't walk through a detector if they can help it, and if they have to for some reason... well, that's why there's forged SINs and licenses. Or why your Hacker bypasses the software for that crucial second. Or your Face distracts the security guard. Or your street samurai just walks through, sets off the alarms anyway, and uses the distraction to let the rest of the group do what they need to do to get into the area. Shadowrunners overcome obstacles for a living, part of what makes a group interesting is how they cover each others' weaknesses to do so.

[TheOOB]

So is it better to aim for being an Adept and having cool innate powers or are you simply stupid for not buying cyber/bioware? How good are mages in general (and what are they good at)?

Why not both? Use bioware to boost your stats, and powers to boost your skills/get unique abilities.

As for magicians, there's an adage for SR4/SR4A. "The less your GM knows about the magic system, the more powerful magicians are, the more they know about the magic system, the less power magicians are".

As far as pure power goes, magicians are not all the hot, but they have versatility. A magician can become instantly decent at something by learning the right spell, and conjuration means you always have useful options. The only truly overpowered things magicians can do are mind control spells, super high force spirits, and using binding to call like 6 spirits at once.

Conjuration is where a magicians true power lies, and edge is almost as important as magic for a conjurer. With the exception of mind control, sorcerery is pretty tame, it's almost always better to just shoot someone than cast a damage dealing spell, and the drain/sustaining penalty for most spells is greater than just getting a similar effect through mundane means(though for only 5 karma you can learn any spell, and use it whenever you want). Magicians may seem powerful and hard to deal with at first, but there are a ton of ways for GM's to rein in their powers.

[Thanatos 51-50]

So, during session last night, the team got used their gun-running contacts to get their hands on four separate bury-themselves-in-concrete arrows with a spool of monowire trailing behind them and a transmitter than lent an electrical charge up the wire to incinerate it after the fact (and then incinerate the arrow).

The GM kind of folded the cost into the rest of the gear we acquired for the run (Including detcord, and zipline gloves.), but I figure that these arrows sound pretty handy for any potential future shadowrunning.
How expensive does the Playground think this kind of thing should be?

[Asheram]

So, during session last night, the team got used their gun-running contacts to get their hands on four separate bury-themselves-in-concrete arrows with a spool of monowire trailing behind them and a transmitter than lent an electrical charge up the wire to incinerate it after the fact (and then incinerate the arrow).

The GM kind of folded the cost into the rest of the gear we acquired for the run (Including detcord, and zipline gloves.), but I figure that these arrows sound pretty handy for any potential future shadowrunning.
How expensive does the Playground think this kind of thing should be?

Sounds a bit like the effect would be the same as a grappling gun along with some gecko tape and stealth rope. Probably usable only once. (Of course stealth rope can only be used once but I meant the arrowheads even if you manage to get them out)
I'd place it at somewhere around 150-250 nuyen for each arrow.

[DigoDragon]

With the exception of mind control, sorcerery is pretty tame, it's almost always better to just shoot someone than cast a damage dealing spell

I agree with most of what you said, though there are a few nice illusion spells in my opinion that can make a run easier (Like Improved Invisibility and Chaos). One of my favorite mage runners was a Wiccan who really hated using magic for violent ends. She knew only one combat spell, but she had a lot of illusions that she employed to stealth her way into just about anyplace. Slap on a sustaining focus and I was good to go.

Conjuration is indeed powerful. Just... don't ask a water spirit to drive the car for you during chase scene if you want to keep the car. :smallbiggrin:

[Longes]

So is it better to aim for being an Adept and having cool innate powers or are you simply stupid for not buying cyber/bioware? How good are mages in general (and what are they good at)?

It's really simple - you want about 1 or 2 points of Essence lost. Take -ware that gives you things that are cheaper than analogous powers - for example, Mucle Toner and Muscle Augmentation. Social Adepts always want Tailored Pheromones.

Adepts are really good. I like them. They are the best hackers (except for the technomancers, but those are their own can of trojan horses) and best faces.

Mages are VERY strong. Spirits PWN opposition with their Immunity to Normal Weapons. Mob Mind PWNs the opposition, because people rarely have high Logic+Willpower save. Improved Invisibility is something everyone has. Stunball is ridiculously good. Force 9 Spirit of Man that throws 9 Stunballs each turn is even better.

[Longes]

Magicians may seem powerful and hard to deal with at first, but there are a ton of ways for GM's to rein in their powers.

Sadly, all those ways are either "Background Count" or "Enemy magicians". And that is bad.

[Kaun]

So, during session last night, the team got used their gun-running contacts to get their hands on four separate bury-themselves-in-concrete arrows with a spool of monowire trailing behind them and a transmitter than lent an electrical charge up the wire to incinerate it after the fact (and then incinerate the arrow).

I read this as ARO's. Took me two re reads before i finally got my head around what you were talking about.

You can get sticky explosive rounds that can be remote detonated in WAR can't you? maybe use them as a guide line.

[Lorsa]

It's really simple - you want about 1 or 2 points of Essence lost. Take -ware that gives you things that are cheaper than analogous powers - for example, Mucle Toner and Muscle Augmentation. Social Adepts always want Tailored Pheromones.-

I thought essence loss was really bad for any type of character that needed the Magic attribute? Or is some loss okay?

[Rhynn]

I thought essence loss was really bad for any type of character that needed the Magic attribute? Or is some loss okay?

It's hugely bad, because Essence loss is subtracted directly from your CURRENT Magic. 4E 20th Anniversary Edition, page 177, under "Magic":
"For every point (or fraction thereof) of Essence lost, the character's Magic attribute and her Magic maximum rating are reduced by one."

Granted, there's nothing I can find (quickly) that explicitly says you lose (spent) Power Points as well, but I'd be surprised if a GM didn't rule it that way; to do otherwise is just asking for Adepts to start with their maximum Magic and then pile cyberware on top of that, suffering no actual ill effects for the lost Essence and Magic.

[Lorsa]

It's hugely bad, because Essence loss is subtracted directly from your CURRENT Magic. 4E 20th Anniversary Edition, page 177, under "Magic":
"For every point (or fraction thereof) of Essence lost, the character's Magic attribute and her Magic maximum rating are reduced by one."

Granted, there's nothing I can find (quickly) that explicitly says you lose (spent) Power Points as well, but I'd be surprised if a GM didn't rule it that way; to do otherwise is just asking for Adepts to start with their maximum Magic and then pile cyberware on top of that, suffering no actual ill effects for the lost Essence and Magic.

I am sure that question has been asked before so I should try to find some errata or faq to answer it.

I'm sure I can find this in the rules when I have time to look, but how does it work? You start with some powers depending on your Magic attribute, but then ou can buy more powers with Karma without increasing your Magic? Do adepts use Magic for something other than determining starting powers?

[Thanatos 51-50]

Fifth Edition explicitly states that Adepts "un-buy" Power Points for every lost points for every lost point of Magic, and that every point of Magic an Adept gets also gives him a Power Point, so if that's not RAW in 4e, it is definitely RAI.

[DigoDragon]

Sadly, all those ways are either "Background Count" or "Enemy magicians". And that is bad.

I've come to find that a liberal application of Uzi to the chest can be quite effective. :smallbiggrin:

[Rhynn]

I am sure that question has been asked before so I should try to find some errata or faq to answer it.

I'm sure I can find this in the rules when I have time to look, but how does it work? You start with some powers depending on your Magic attribute, but then ou can buy more powers with Karma without increasing your Magic? Do adepts use Magic for something other than determining starting powers?

You only get Power Points when you get more Magic. In 4E, AFAIK, you automatically get a Power Point for every Magic point you buy. Once you reach Magic 6, you can Initiate to get even more. (Mystic Adepts choose whether to use each point of Magic they get to increase Magic or Power Points.)

[Asheram]

I am sure that question has been asked before so I should try to find some errata or faq to answer it.

I'm sure I can find this in the rules when I have time to look, but how does it work? You start with some powers depending on your Magic attribute, but then ou can buy more powers with Karma without increasing your Magic? Do adepts use Magic for something other than determining starting powers?

Adepts aren't that complicated after some reading.
Say that you've got Magic 4 and get the Adept quality. Now you've got an equal amount of Power Points (The resource to buy adept powers) as your magic.
As you expend your Power Points you count backwards from the top of your magic.

Say that you spend a full power point on adept powers. This "takes up" one of your magic points and makes it unavailable to use. You still Have Magic 4 but you can only use Magic 3 as if that was all you had.

If you later buy another point and reach Magic 5, you can only use Magic 4 due to still having invested 1 full Power Point.

[Lorsa]

So while I am very intrigued by the adept quality it's unfortunately very inefficient compared to simply buying -ware. It seems almost impossible to get any useful amount of powers to make up for all the fancy implants you could have.

Money seems easier to come by then BP / Karma.

[Thanatos 51-50]

Money seems easier to come by then BP / Karma.

Of course it is.
You can steal money.

[Asheram]

So while I am very intrigued by the adept quality it's unfortunately very inefficient compared to simply buying -ware. It seems almost impossible to get any useful amount of powers to make up for all the fancy implants you could have.

Money seems easier to come by then BP / Karma.

That is true. For the regular character I'd wager that investing in "ware" is "easier" than having to invest into magic points which will be drained into Power Points eventually anyhow.

But if you break it down.
Ware would have the benefit that it doesn't cost BP/Karma.
While Adept powers are stealthier, no limited accessability*, costs no money, can't be hacked.

But I digress. :smallbiggrin: We went from talking rules to talking effectiveness and I'm sure the rest of the folks here have much more intimate knowledge of that than me.

*Accessability in that you don't have to have the right contacts or know the right people to get what you want.

[Longes]

I thought essence loss was really bad for any type of character that needed the Magic attribute? Or is some loss okay?

It's a gain/loss balance thing. You have a number of Power Points equal to your Magic. If you spend a point of Essence on Muscle Enhancement 4 and Muscle Augmentation 4, you get 4/4 attribute points for a price of Power Point.

Some 'ware IS ALWAYS A GOOD DEAL FOR AN ADEPT. This isn't always true for magicians, because they want to spend money on Power Focus.


So while I am very intrigued by the adept quality it's unfortunately very inefficient compared to simply buying -ware. It seems almost impossible to get any useful amount of powers to make up for all the fancy implants you could have.
Nononono. Adept powers are awesome. You just want some ware to boost you, and use adept power for your main tricks. My troll hacker adept was an awesome hacker, had 19/17 armor and was punching people for 20P unresisted by armor.

[Lorsa]

That is true. For the regular character I'd wager that investing in "ware" is "easier" than having to invest into magic points which will be drained into Power Points eventually anyhow.

But if you break it down.
Ware would have the benefit that it doesn't cost BP/Karma.
While Adept powers are stealthier, no limited accessability*, costs no money, can't be hacked.

But I digress. :smallbiggrin: We went from talking rules to talking effectiveness and I'm sure the rest of the folks here have much more intimate knowledge of that than me.

*Accessability in that you don't have to have the right contacts or know the right people to get what you want.

Well, effectiveness is part of what I wanted to talk about. I don't know much about the other players, as it will be the first time playing with them, and I have more than once made the mistake of making something that sounds like really cool with a new system but turns out to be really ineffective and I was hoping to be able to spot what sort of powerlevel the other players want to be on and adapt myself accordingly.

And for that I need to know what is inefficient. But no, I don't think I want to play a drone-controller technomancer. I think that sounds a bit boring.

[Longes]

Lorsa, UmaroVI died for your sins (http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=4495.0).

[DodgerH2O]

Lorsa, UmaroVI died for your sins (http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=4495.0).

Just an FYI, of the half dozen characters linked that I've browsed all are far more optimized than any character I've created or seen created at any table I've run or played at. I've seen characters like those on PbP games (here and Myth-Weavers) however. They also rely on sourcebook gear and qualities, so if you use them check with your GM.

If I were running a game with a team of runners taken directly from those pages, I'd have to throw much stronger challenges at them, as they'd blow through most of my intro runs without taking a scratch.

[Asheram]

That does remind me, I'm setting up a campaign in a week or two and I'm planning to give some visual aids. Does anyone of you have any good resource for images of potential Mr Johnsons and different Shadowrunesque characters?

[Thanatos 51-50]

So, despite never using street names over comms, a guy in a secure room somehow knew my Gunfighter Adept's Street name, greeted her with it, and exploited her code of honour to make it so she couldn't hurt him (or let anybody else hurt him).
He didn't recognise anyone else in the party except for the shaman (who was framed for terrorism in her backstory).
How hosed am I?

[Asheram]

So, despite never using street names over comms, a guy in a secure room somehow knew my Gunfighter Adept's Street name, greeted her with it, and exploited her code of honour to make it so she couldn't hurt him (or let anybody else hurt him).
He didn't recognise anyone else in the party except for the shaman (who was framed for terrorism in her backstory).
How hosed am I?

Well, someone has done his legwork. I hear that California is lovely at this time of year.
But in all seriousness, someone who is that bold either is very sure in his info or has some additional hold on you. I'd be, very carefully, planning an exit strategy.

[Longes]

Just an FYI, of the half dozen characters linked that I've browsed all are far more optimized than any character I've created or seen created at any table I've run or played at. I've seen characters like those on PbP games (here and Myth-Weavers) however. They also rely on sourcebook gear and qualities, so if you use them check with your GM.

If I were running a game with a team of runners taken directly from those pages, I'd have to throw much stronger challenges at them, as they'd blow through most of my intro runs without taking a scratch.

I dread to imagine the games you've played.

"They also rely on sourcebook gear and qualities" - why wouldn't they?

They aren't that optimized, really. That troll hacker adept I've mentioned? That was at chargen.

[Longes]

Can you give an example of the character you've played? I'm curious now :)

[DodgerH2O]

I dread to imagine the games you've played.

"They also rely on sourcebook gear and qualities" - why wouldn't they?

They aren't that optimized, really. That troll hacker adept I've mentioned? That was at chargen.

The sourcebook note was really for Lorsa, as not all GMs have access to all sourcebooks. Nothing wrong with using sourcebook stuff, as long as the person running the game can verify their stats and the rest of the party (and the opposition) have equal access.

The games I've played and run were low-op and plenty of fun for everyone involved, which is really the most important thing. People enjoy playing straight Fighters and healbot Clerics in D&D, which would make a lot of folk on this board cringe, but if it works for the group, I don't see a problem.


Can you give an example of the character you've played? I'm curious now :)

I don't have the old charsheets for my last group, but the "powergamer" in it was a straight Adept focused on melee (I think he had 14 dice at chargen and did 8 damage), who had 10/8 armor and mostly used Gymnastics to take advantage of the terrain in combat. The others were a demolitions expert with a shotgun who spent most of his BPs on crafting skills, knowledge skills, and contacts (as well as a detachable cyberarm filled with plastique, and a vehicle rigged to blow) and an elf shaman who mostly focused on blasting and healing and whose backup weapons were a bow (strength 2 character) and a staff.

We didn't have access to anything but the core book at the time, so SecureTech wasn't in the ruleset we were using, nor were the various ways to make unarmed combat and adepts more effective.

Edit: Also found the last character I made, purposely low-op Street Sam (the other PCs were similarly low-op, so I tried to follow suit) here (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=351016).

[Lorsa]

Thanks for all the help guys!

I have two more questions, or rather one question and one observation.

If you have some form of cyberware installed, like an arm or whatever, and it gets destryoed and then replaced do you loose Essence again or is the fact that you've already replaced your arm once enough?

Also, Shadowrun seem to suffer the same problem as many other systems where you use one type of points in character creation and other types in play. I always find it sad when the system basically tells you that having Attributes alternating between 1 and 6 and having 3 is shooting yourself in the foot.

[Asheram]

Thanks for all the help guys!

I have two more questions, or rather one question and one observation.

If you have some form of cyberware installed, like an arm or whatever, and it gets destryoed and then replaced do you loose Essence again or is the fact that you've already replaced your arm once enough?


Essence is a bit like your bodys Feng Shui. How... "Unmolested" your soul is by artificial components.
Once you give a part of your body up, you won't get it back easily, if ever.
Edit: That is, No. :smallbiggrin:

Edit:

Also, Shadowrun seem to suffer the same problem as many other systems where you use one type of points in character creation and other types in play. I always find it sad when the system basically tells you that having Attributes alternating between 1 and 6 and having 3 is shooting yourself in the foot.

I'm not sure that I follow, but 3 isn't that bad in this case. A 3 means that you will (usually) complete an easy (1) task and since you most often add a skill to that, which you hopefully have at least 3 in (sum 6), you'll end up with averaging on managing average tasks (2) as well.

You do roll a Lot of dice in Shadowrun and even if you only can start with a natural score of a certain number it's not difficult to increase that with 'ware, adept powers, gear and good planning.

[Longes]

Thanks for all the help guys!

I have two more questions, or rather one question and one observation.

If you have some form of cyberware installed, like an arm or whatever, and it gets destryoed and then replaced do you loose Essence again or is the fact that you've already replaced your arm once enough?
When you remove the implant, you get an Essence Hole in its place. When you set a new implant you fill the hole first, and then spend new Essence.


Also, Shadowrun seem to suffer the same problem as many other systems where you use one type of points in character creation and other types in play. I always find it sad when the system basically tells you that having Attributes alternating between 1 and 6 and having 3 is shooting yourself in the foot.

Yep. The explanation is simple - WoD and Shadowrun were stealing from each other everything that wasn't nailed down.

[Necroticplague]

Yep. The explanation is simple - WoD and Shadowrun were stealing from each other everything that wasn't nailed down.

Now, lets be realistic, this is Shadowrun we're talking about.

I don't think they are limiting themselves to the stuff that isn't nailed down.:smallcool:

[Lorsa]

I'm not sure that I follow, but 3 isn't that bad in this case. A 3 means that you will (usually) complete an easy (1) task and since you most often add a skill to that, which you hopefully have at least 3 in (sum 6), you'll end up with averaging on managing average tasks (2) as well.

I didn't mean that 3 is bad from a mechanical standpoint, but it's bad from a min-maxing standpoint. I do admit that 6 is a bit too expensive though, but starting with 1 and 5 is better than starting with 3 and 3 as it's much cheaper to raise from 1->3 than from 3->5. The discrepancy between char-gen and in-game advacement can easily lead to very weird starting characters.


When you remove the implant, you get an Essence Hole in its place. When you set a new implant you fill the hole first, and then spend new Essence.

That means you actually can upgrade from normal cyberware to alphaware later in the game? Good to know!

[DigoDragon]

Once you give a part of your body up, you won't get it back easily, if ever.
Edit: That is, No. :smallbiggrin:

Well, technically there is a way (I believe in SR4's Augmentation book), but it's so insanely expensive and time consuming that it might as well be No. I personally think it's more useful as a McGuffin for a long term campaign.

Also, I don't think any player in my circle has ever looked into recovering essence anyway. You're either a souped-up cyber hit man or a mage. I haven't seen much middle ground. :smallbiggrin:

[Necroticplague]

Also, I don't think any player in my circle has ever looked into recovering essence anyway. You're either a souped-up cyber hit man or a mage. I haven't seen much middle ground. :smallbiggrin:

In my experience, that's been it too. The only people that might have a middle ground are adepts, using some bio to save on karma, though I will admit that's a minority. The rest is people who want more mods, but can't afford it yet.

Heck, in the last shadowrun group I was in, it was taken to its logical extreme with our infiltrator had about .2 essense, the fighter (me) was a cyberzombie, but the technomancer and mage had not a single mod at all.

Related note:does anyone else get the feeling a party is often playing different games, not just being a party with different roles? Just thinking back to gripes from the gm, all 4 of us were only really playing the same game in that one of us succeeding helped others (i.e, the mage disabled a ward for the infiltrator, the technnomancer uses a turret to give me suppressive fire).

[Longes]

Related note:does anyone else get the feeling a party is often playing different games, not just being a party with different roles? Just thinking back to gripes from the gm, all 4 of us were only really playing the same game in that one of us succeeding helped others (i.e, the mage disabled a ward for the infiltrator, the technnomancer uses a turret to give me suppressive fire).

This is inevitable for any game with the large number of subsystems that don't really interact. Which is why having a large number of subsystems that don't interact is lame.

[DigoDragon]

Related note:does anyone else get the feeling a party is often playing different games, not just being a party with different roles?

Happened a lot in my Shadowrun games, probably because we're essentially mercs who were hired from different places to form a "team" to do a "job" for something we call "money". :smallbiggrin: It's hilarious when most of the players build backstories that someone is after them for something they did before, so they end up with this 'Trust no One' attitude even among team members.

Though after a few jobs where no one backstabs the team, we might start warming up to each other.

[Thanatos 51-50]

Shameless cross-promotion:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=16460462#post16460462

[Lorsa]

Alright, I have a very different question now. How prominent is the ethnical background of a metahuman? Many of them would look vastly different from normal humans I imagined in terms of facial features, but how much stays with you? Would an elf born from two black-skinned parents essentially become a dark elf?

[Asheram]

Alright, I have a very different question now. How prominent is the ethnical background of a metahuman? Many of them would look vastly different from normal humans I imagined in terms of facial features, but how much stays with you? Would an elf born from two black-skinned parents essentially become a dark elf?

It's funny that you mention dark elves since they actually exist in Shadowrun.
I suggest you have a look at the Runners Companion supplement under "Metatypes" which lists a series of sub-species to the major races, for example the "Night Ones" metatype of Elves (Europe) and the "Oni" Metatype of Orcs (Asia)

Anyhow, to answer your question, yes. The genetic heritage has influence on skin characteristics, it says that it varies from white to black just as in humans.

To read more about elves, please look here (http://shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/Elves).

[Necroticplague]

Happened a lot in my Shadowrun games, probably because we're essentially mercs who were hired from different places to form a "team" to do a "job" for something we call "money". :smallbiggrin: It's hilarious when most of the players build backstories that someone is after them for something they did before, so they end up with this 'Trust no One' attitude even among team members.

Though after a few jobs where no one backstabs the team, we might start warming up to each other.


This is inevitable for any game with the large number of subsystems that don't really interact. Which is why having a large number of subsystems that don't interact is lame.

Yeah, both of these seem to sum it up nicely: a lack of trust and interaction. Heck, even though me and the infiltrator were the two physically present, we almost never effected each other. At least the Mage sometimes needed me to punch spirits, or the technomancer use my body as a connection node. Of course, mistrust in the group existed because it seems everyone had one debt they were covering and one person they would rather not know they exist, so everyone was worried the rest would sell them out to their latter to pay the former. In my case, I worried they'd sell me out to some corporate R&D, and they worried I'd sell them out for all the drugs I needed (which didn't come cheap black market, or anonymously legally).

[Lorsa]

It's funny that you mention dark elves since they actually exist in Shadowrun.
I suggest you have a look at the Runners Companion supplement under "Metatypes" which lists a series of sub-species to the major races, for example the "Night Ones" metatype of Elves (Europe) and the "Oni" Metatype of Orcs (Asia)

Anyhow, to answer your question, yes. The genetic heritage has influence on skin characteristics, it says that it varies from white to black just as in humans.

To read more about elves, please look here (http://shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/Elves).

Thanks! Seems like Runner's Companion has some interesting information overall. I just used it for additional qualities, but reading it seems like a good idea...

[TheOOB]

Thanks! Seems like Runner's Companion has some interesting information overall. I just used it for additional qualities, but reading it seems like a good idea...

It's basically the big book of non-standard character options. It's worth reading, but keep in mind it was almost entirely outsources to freelancers with little to no central balancing or editing, so it's quality and balance is all over the map.(e.g. the karma creation system is totally overpowered and make no sense, while drakes are actually compelling and interesting character choices.)

[Bobby Derie]

It's basically the big book of non-standard character options. It's worth reading, but keep in mind it was almost entirely outsources to freelancers
Well, no. Everything in Shadowrun is written by freelancers. RC is no different from any other book in the gameline in that respect.


with little to no central balancing or editing, so it's quality and balance is all over the map.
This is true, and I'd like to say it was mostly because we went through like three line devs during the writing cycle on that project, but that might be disingenous.


(e.g. the karma creation system is totally overpowered and make no sense, while drakes are actually compelling and interesting character choices.)
The Karma system needed errata which was never printed or published to adjust the attribute costs. Drakes and Infected are overpriced - in hindsight we should have done more playtesting. I'm qualified to say this because I wrote both sections, among other things.

[HMS Invincible]

Someone brought this up and I was wondering about how the mechanics vs the fluff works on this. How do you hide a gun from a scanner? There are rules for hiding guns from perception tests, but it seems odd to apply it to a scanner. Is there a bonus that the scanner gets? Or do they autowin? I ask because the GM insists on putting weapon scanners everywhere but the rules don't point to anything that would stop it. Did I miss something or is this a decker/mage thing to deal with?

Edit: Any ideas to get around it or is using my sneak skil legitimate?

[TheOOB]

Someone brought this up and I was wondering about how the mechanics vs the fluff works on this. How do you hide a gun from a scanner? There are rules for hiding guns from perception tests, but it seems odd to apply it to a scanner. Is there a bonus that the scanner gets? Or do they autowin? I ask because the GM insists on putting weapon scanners everywhere but the rules don't point to anything that would stop it. Did I miss something or is this a decker/mage thing to deal with?

Edit: Any ideas to get around it or is using my sneak skil legitimate?

It depends. Usually it's a Device Rating vs. Palming test, but it's up to the GM/

[Rhynn]

I think the idea is that someone (even a computer program) has to be interpreting what the scanner shows and can thus miss a firearm? Obviously if it's just a scanner that beeps at any metal you'll be unable to smuggle metal firearms through it, but I assume that's not the case.

[Cristo Meyers]

Might be a bit too technical, but I would ask the GM precisely how the scanner works. Is it a metal detector? X-ray? Something else? Otherwise how are you supposed to be able to come up with a plan to get around them?

[TheCountAlucard]

The books actually include some guns that are easier to sneak through scanners; they use stuff like ceramic composites or other materials instead of metal.

[Bobby Derie]

It may depend on edition, but usually that would be Scanner Rating vs. Concealability Rating of the item in question.

[Necroticplague]

Might be a bit too technical, but I would ask the GM precisely how the scanner works. Is it a metal detector? X-ray? Something else? Otherwise how are you supposed to be able to come up with a plan to get around them?

No matter how a scanner works, it seems like being cybered up makes them harder to descern. Metal detectors? My arm triggers that, doesn't mean I got weapons on me (though the arm itself has more sharp parts than an awakened porcupine). X rays run into similar problems (though that would require the guns to be in the arm). I'm pretty sure all detectors are built on the assumption guns and people are made of different stuff, cyber makes that unfeasible. So just get a cheap arm with an empty slot inside to store the gun, and you should be able to get past anything short of manually opening the slot up.

[HMS Invincible]

It's 5th edition if it matters. I looked at the possible scanners in the book, but it's hard to fight against DM fiat. I believe it was a metal scanner and/or MAD. I know he ruled that it beeped when I walked in full of augments but no guns. I guess in that scenario it would be a palming test and/or concealibility modifier vs the patdown? Or could I have sabotaged the detector?

I read online that people used a concealed holster that helped protect against scanners, but it sounded more fluffy than crunchy. The weird thing is, there's few items that actually resist scanning, just a few guns.

[comicshorse]

No matter how a scanner works, it seems like being cybered up makes them harder to descern. Metal detectors? My arm triggers that, doesn't mean I got weapons on me (though the arm itself has more sharp parts than an awakened porcupine). X rays run into similar problems (though that would require the guns to be in the arm). I'm pretty sure all detectors are built on the assumption guns and people are made of different stuff, cyber makes that unfeasible. So just get a cheap arm with an empty slot inside to store the gun, and you should be able to get past anything short of manually opening the slot up.

I thought Shadowrun scanners used chemical detectors to detect the propellant in the bullets

[HMS Invincible]

Per the corebook, there's a MAD scanner, I have it in my char's vehicle. If cyber is an accepted part of life, a viable play is a palming/conceability test vs a patdown. The question that came up was on some forum, someone mentioned a holster that inhibits scanners + sabotaging the scanner as you walk through. The first is more feasible for me than the latter, but the holster piqued my interest since I don't have many dice in palming. That, and the scorpion pistol is harder to conceal then a holdout. Is there a holster that inhibits scanning? Is it just the concealed holster out of the accessories for guns, or was it DM fiat?

[Necroticplague]

I thought Shadowrun scanners used chemical detectors to detect the propellant in the bullets

Their are several versions. One's basically just a fancy name for modern day metal detectors (MAD), one's a bit more precise radar scanner meant to I.D. cyberware, and one does what you say. In which case "use a cyberarm with a hollow chamber" still works, you just have to use an airtight chamber.

[Thanatos 51-50]

You can always hack the scanner.

Alternately: you can always get a gun and/or claws built into your cyberarm. These are specifically mentioned in the book to duck under MAD because they're mostly non-metal, and any actual metal bits are incorporated into the workings of the cyberarm, itself.
Likewise, Cyber-Holsters can be assumed to be airtight, since they're designed with stealth in mind, ditto for smuggling compartments. Large smuggling compartments in legware are specifically mentioned as being able to hold a heavy pistol or submachine gun.

[HMS Invincible]

The game seems to think that all the fancy technology can only be defeated by a hacker or magic. Seems weird that there's absolutely no way around a MAD/radar sensor. Unless the GM wants to throw logic/verisimilitude out the window and let me use palming to counter technological sensors. Alas, I'll just always drag the decker with me. Splitting up the party is overrated anyway.

[Asheram]

The Karma system needed errata which was never printed or published to adjust the attribute costs. Drakes and Infected are overpriced - in hindsight we should have done more playtesting. I'm qualified to say this because I wrote both sections, among other things.

Oh dear... having a look at the Drakes now and I see what you mean. Since you've already pointed it out and I'd hate to be rude but, 120 karma to unlock the latent dracomorphosis?

[Bobby Derie]

Yeah, because my thought process at the time was the cumulative cost of the powers and attribute bonuses. In hindsight, what I should have done with the Infected and Drakes was allow the PCs to buy powers for some set cost and thus reduce the initial cost of the characters to something...reasonable. But yes, the whole karma deficit bit was a debacle. This is the book where I kicked myself afterwords and promised to never again do game design in a box.

[Asheram]

A bit of a random question here but I'm working on a small campaign involving a port.

The main premise is that the runners should steal a cargo container from a cargo dock before it gets scanned in customs (the meta is a smuggling and insurance scam) but I'm not quite sure how to work it. Automation would be high and I imagine just about every device is rigger adapted and run remotely in order to ensure that the dock runs at peak capacity at all time.
Do you think every container would be X-rayed or would it be a random pick?

I suppose what I'm really asking for is "how do you imagine cargo and customs procedure would work in the 2070s?"

[Rhynn]

Do you think every container would be X-rayed or would it be a random pick?

Basically everyone involved in shipping cargo wants it going through fast, so probably only a small portion of containers would be fully scanned/inspected (as I understand is currently practice). Automation doesn't really help that much here, it's still going to take X time per container.

[The Random NPC]

At a guess, I'd say that the X-rays are automated, but only a randomly selected few are actually looked at. That way, if the cops come by to check on a container, the shipyard can sell them the scans.
EDIT: By that I mean all of them are X-rayed, but only some of the scans are inspected. There might be some automated detection system for illegal shapes, but that would be easy to bypass.

[HMS Invincible]

How much noise should a decker reasonably expect and how should they get around it? This is part GM bullcrap detector and part player complaint. It appears that there's no way to roll past 13-14 dice on a hacking roll, so eating 3 dice in noise penalty really sucks. Thoughts?

[LibraryOgre]

How much noise should a decker reasonably expect and how should they get around it? This is part GM bullcrap detector and part player complaint. It appears that there's no way to roll past 13-14 dice on a hacking roll, so eating 3 dice in noise penalty really sucks. Thoughts?

Really, once the RAS kicks in, you shouldn't have any noise penalties... you simply don't notice it, because your head is in cyberspace, not meatspace. It's why deckers have people to watch them while they go byebye.

[Kaun]

Really, once the RAS kicks in, you shouldn't have any noise penalties... you simply don't notice it, because your head is in cyberspace, not meatspace. It's why deckers have people to watch them while they go byebye.

Does he mean actually noise or network noise, like system interference or excessive corrupted/junk packets?

Maybe i shouldn't wade into this one pre coffee 4.

[HMS Invincible]

I reread the 5e rules for decking, and it seems that if we get a direct connection, there should be 0 noise. If we get him within 100 meters of the target, like say a bank and there's no spam, there should also be 0 noise penalties. Am I reading that right?

In addition, does your lifestyle matter with regards to connecting to the target? For example, if you are close enough, you should never have to suffer grid-to-grid penalties.

[Thanatos 51-50]

I reread the 5e rules for decking, and it seems that if we get a direct connection, there should be 0 noise. If we get him within 100 meters of the target, like say a bank and there's no spam, there should also be 0 noise penalties. Am I reading that right?

In addition, does your lifestyle matter with regards to connecting to the target? For example, if you are close enough, you should never have to suffer grid-to-grid penalties.

As I read it, you'd still suffer cross-grid penalties unless you're on the same grid (and again if You're on the Public Grid. ) lifestyle only (potentially) eleliminates the need to hack onto a new grid.
Personally, I want rules on shunting someone to a different grid (Like the Public one). Possibly as a Complex Form).

[TheOOB]

I reread the 5e rules for decking, and it seems that if we get a direct connection, there should be 0 noise. If we get him within 100 meters of the target, like say a bank and there's no spam, there should also be 0 noise penalties. Am I reading that right?

In addition, does your lifestyle matter with regards to connecting to the target? For example, if you are close enough, you should never have to suffer grid-to-grid penalties.

Within 100 meters of a bank and no spam, what city do you run in chummer?

In all seriousness though, for most things a runner will try to do, noise is only an issue if they are very far away or there is spam or such in the area. It's a lot like background count. It's not uncommon per say, but it shouldn't be the norm.

[The Random NPC]

Anyone know how to disarm a bomb in 4e?

[LibraryOgre]

CUT THE BLUE WIRE!

Personally, I'd go with Demolitions, the Logic-based Active Skill. It specifically has a specialization in defusing. I might let someone use Hardware to "deconstruct" the bomb mechanism, or Hacking if there's a wireless command option (classic "Low-end commlink providing the detonation command"). Hardware would definitely have a higher Threshold, whereas hacking might avoid the problem entirely.

[The Random NPC]

What I meant was, is there any rules for disarming a bomb? Is it extended or 1 check? How do you know if the bomb was set off? How do you determine the threshold, assuming the bomb setter didn't want the bomb disarmed, but you could get access to it without setting it off?

[DigoDragon]

Is it extended or 1 check?

I'd reckon that will depend on how realistic you want to portray the defusing action. Based on videos I've seen with "Bomb bots", defusing an explosive is normally a slow and careful process.

[Necroticplague]

I'd reckon that will depend on how realistic you want to portray the defusing action. Based on videos I've seen with "Bomb bots", defusing an explosive is normally a slow and careful process.

Realistic would be an extended action against difficulty of the bomb-setters demolitions, with a botch being setting it off early. Of course, assuming the bomb isn't integrated into architecture, it'd probably just be easier to throw it somewhere nobody is.

[Thanatos 51-50]

One of my 5e players wants to have a wingsuit-type armour modification built within his Urban Explorer Jumpsuit.
Rules on the wingsuit seem like somethingI can probably handwave without hard numbers, but I do need a number on price.
Any ideas what a 2075, built-in wingsuit would cost?

[LibraryOgre]

Depends on the complexity. If it's a constantly attached airfoil (making him a flying squirrel), then I imagine pretty cheap... double the cost of the armor to account for the extra material and bracing.

If he's looking for something more flexible... the wings can be stored so he doesn't have a constant set of flaps, only when he wants them... I'd go at least triple, and be more inclined to look towards 5 times or so.

[Vknight]

I'd say first 100 for material constantly active, +250 for it too be able to fold and the bracing. If the armor is 1000+ credits increase the cost by another 200. Increase the cost by 100 for Dwarves. Increase the cost by 150 for Trolls.

Another 250 for it too be the same baseline armor statistics. Aka same Ballistic and Impact armor
Add the cost of any special effects, non-conductivity, fire resistance etc. as 1 ranking. So if the armor has Fire Resistance, Nonconductivity he adds the cost of 1 ranking too the cost.

So 350-500 credits + Special Notes.

---

As for the demolitions

Are we looking at simple trigger or complex trigger?
Simple Mechanism; 1 Action up too 3 Initiative Passes. Being 1 to 3 Demolition Checks

Complex Triggers extended tests(1minute too 1 hour per Demolitions check)

[Thanatos 51-50]

Sanity check:

Wingsuit: Capacity 2: 1500 nuyen
-- Folding : Capacity +1: +250 nuyen

This hi-tech airfoil is built into the armour, granting the wearer a plus 2 to gymnastics abd athletics tests to increase the distance of a jump or to reduce/ignore damage from falling.
However, due to the awkward nature of the suit, the wearer also receives a -1 dice pool modifier to all other Agility tests (including combat), and a -1 to initiative.
A folding wingsuit must be deployed as a simple action before its bonuses apply, and a simple action to stow the suit removes the penalties.
Flying any appreciable distance is an Agility + Pilot Aircraft (3), made once per nautical mile or city block, the wingsuit's agility penalty does not apply here, but the Glider specialization does.
Wireless: Deploying or stowing the suit is a free action.

[The Random NPC]

As for the demolitions

Are we looking at simple trigger or complex trigger?
Simple Mechanism; 1 Action up too 3 Initiative Passes. Being 1 to 3 Demolition Checks

Complex Triggers extended tests(1minute too 1 hour per Demolitions check)

Since there aren't any rules, I've been thinking about how I might houserule it. I was thinking something like, Extended test, target number based on complexity, track any rolled 1's, when they reach a predetermined number, the bomb explodes. I'm thinking 15 for commercial explosives, and every 2 success on the Demolitions test to set the bomb can be used to modify the Boom Number by one. I'm not sure how to represent lack of training though. With this rule, it's safer to not be trained in Demolitions, as you could only roll one 1 at a time.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Since there aren't any rules, I've been thinking about how I might houserule it. I was thinking something like, Extended test, target number based on complexity, track any rolled 1's, when they reach a predetermined number, the bomb explodes. I'm thinking 15 for commercial explosives, and every 2 success on the Demolitions test to set the bomb can be used to modify the Boom Number by one. I'm not sure how to represent lack of training though. With this rule, it's safer to not be trained in Demolitions, as you could only roll one 1 at a time.

Just use the rules for limited extended tests (every time you roll after the first you get one die less) and handle glitches as normal. A normal glitch might just jam something and prevent you from properly disarming the bomb, a critical glitch means the bomb goes off in your face (which probably means you're dead, chunky salsa rule).
You'll need to fiddle with target numbers a little depending on how much your players optimize their dice pools but it works fine in my experience.

[DocShadow]

Is this in addition to the Urban Explorer?
Why Pilot Aircraft v.s. Free Fall on tests?
Dice penalty applicable only if wing is deployed?
I do not foresee ever being able carry anyone with a wing suit.

[Thanatos 51-50]

Is this in addition to the Urban Explorer?
This is in addition to ANY individual piece of armour. It does, however, eat up to three "Slots" for amrour modification, so you'd be sacrificing three points of, say, Insulation, to get it.


Why Pilot Aircraft v.s. Free Fall on tests?
One part I-forgot-Free-Fall-was-a-thing, two parts "You're actually piloting the suit like a hang-glider and why would a hang-glider be Free Fall"


Dice penalty applicable only if wing is deployed?
Yes. However, the cheaper model is *always* deployed.


I do not foresee ever being able carry anyone with a wing suit.
Not while in-flight, no. At least, not without dangling them from one hand like a kitten.
Rather intentionally so.

[Roncorps]

I mostly played Shadowrun 3 and I want to start a game with this system BUT, the Matrix part seem sooooo much trouble to learn and play. I've read that 4th, even 5th, kind of got it better.

Question : Could it be hard to downgrade stuff like the Matrix to the 3th edition ?

Another question, not linked to the matrix : What do you think about the rule, in 4th, that put a maximum dice pool depending on the weapon used ?

Another question, same thing : Are 3th pre-generated adventure/campaign, like Wake of the Comet or Survival of the Fittest (and Brainscan, Renraku, etc.) worth it ?

Another question (this one final hehe) : I heard many good thing about Season 3 and 4 of Shadowrun Missions. Could they be difficult to downgrade to 3rd ?

Thanks a lot !

[Driderman]

Okay, so we sat down to make characters for a Shadowrun 5th edition game the other day and the GM basically told me that to be competent in something, I should have a dice pool of around 12. Which to me translates into "if you want to be able to succeed at a skill, you need to have maxed both the skill an and the attribute associated with it". That seems kinda weird, can it really be true that the system is built for this kind of min-maxing/overspecialization?

[The Random NPC]

Okay, so we sat down to make characters for a Shadowrun 5th edition game the other day and the GM basically told me that to be competent in something, I should have a dice pool of around 12. Which to me translates into "if you want to be able to succeed at a skill, you need to have maxed both the skill an and the attribute associated with it". That seems kinda weird, can it really be true that the system is built for this kind of min-maxing/overspecialization?

Yes and no, you don't need to max both to get 12, but the system does reward specialization.

[Delta]

Okay, so we sat down to make characters for a Shadowrun 5th edition game the other day and the GM basically told me that to be competent in something, I should have a dice pool of around 12. Which to me translates into "if you want to be able to succeed at a skill, you need to have maxed both the skill an and the attribute associated with it". That seems kinda weird, can it really be true that the system is built for this kind of min-maxing/overspecialization?

To a certain degree, yes. Shadowrun is a game about a group of professional criminals, who tend to be highly specialized. In SR5, Limits put a bit of a... well, limit to the amount of ridiculous over-specialization that was pretty common in earlier editions, but in general, in SR, you play someone who will be paid a lot of money to do a specific job, so you should be able to do that job well.

I think the main problem here is the definition of the word "competent", if you mean by competent to have a reasonable chance to succeed in average (or somewhat difficult) tasks, then of course you don't need 12 dice. Your GM was probably thinking about a pretty difficult task under less than ideal circumstances where failure isn't really an option (which is a pretty usual situation to come up during a SR adventure), so you want to have more than a "reasonable" chance of success to be considered "competent" in that situation.

[Telok]

A competent criminal will hotwire a car in less than a minute.

A competent runner will bypass the security and IFF software of a military helicopter in under thirty seconds, while being shot at.

[Erock]

I need to learn some Sixth World culture and history, what books should I look into?

[LibraryOgre]

Shadowtalk is great on culture, though a bit outdated for the current edition. For History there is, of course, the Almanac.

[Driderman]

Responses are appreciated, although it seems we're starting "from the ground up", so to speak, as we started with a scenario that basically involved retrieving a kidnapped girl from some local mobsters, for a whopping 500 Nuyen per Runner payout :smallwink:

[Delta]

Okay that sounds like low level. If your GM continues with very small payouts, you should seriously consider playing a magical character. I've had GMs who thought giving PCs any kind of money was a really bad thing in the path, and playing a decker/hacker or other character based heavily on cyber- or bioware isn't a lot of fun if you can't afford anything.

[Necroticplague]

True, but I've found that the Johnson's low payouts can usually be subsidized by stealing and selling everything you can. You can start with the guns or sticks off every gaurd you can take out. And any cameras set up as security. And any cyber you can rip off of corpses.

[The Random NPC]

Responses are appreciated, although it seems we're starting "from the ground up", so to speak, as we started with a scenario that basically involved retrieving a kidnapped girl from some local mobsters, for a whopping 500 Nuyen per Runner payout :smallwink:

You might want to ask your GM how much he thinks your character is worth. I've crunched some numbers in the past, and I came up with about 3000 Nuyen per night for stealing cars (details in spoiler). Granted at that point you would be responsible for 1.5% of all auto thefts in the city of Seattle, but that option would still be open.
If I can find it, or redo the math I'll post it, but I found the average price of all cars and trucks, while ignoring the outliers like that 80,000 Nuyen one. Then I took a 6 connection fixer and figured out an average number of hits, and figured out a profit for selling in 1-7 days. Then I averaged those profits together to get the average profit per night per car. To get the crime stat, I took the percentage of auto thefts in Seattle in 2010 and assumed they wouldn't change, and applied them to the 2072 stats I found on a wiki. In all likelihood, the crime would go up, but not necessarily be reported. Can't really tell though, all those societal changes'll probably mess up any general trends and it's far enough into the "future" that you can't predict them.
EDIT: I did the math again, found the average of all the cars and trucks (about 49000), discarded all prices outside of 1 standard deviation, and got an average of just under 9000 nuyen after selling it for 30% and your fixer takes a cut of 30%. After some consideration, I assumed your fixer would be an elf with max negotiation and a specialization in fencing. If he grabs Trustworthy, tailored pheromones, rating 6 emotion software, and maxes out charisma, he can get 26 dice for that test. that means he can buy 6 hits and will need 12 hours to sell your car. I also assume he has other things to do and can only make 1 check per day, so it takes 2 days. 9000 nuyen over 2 days ends up with 4500 nuyen per day, and the average for selling it in 1 or 2 days comes out to about 6700 nuyen. I redid the crime stat too, using data for 2011 auto thefts. I ended up with 136,000 cars stolen per year in Shadowrun, and since you're just stealing 1 car a day, you'd be responsible for under 0.3% (0.268%) of all auto thefts.

[Delta]

In my experience, GMs who think that 500 bucks is adequate payment for jobs are really big on "Oh, yeah that stuff's broke you won't get any money for it" or "Oh no you can't sell that because of [reasons]!"

That's not to hate on low power campaigns which can be a lot of fun, but a lot of GMs think that just withholding money is enough to make a campaign low powered, which just takes a lot of power away from mundane characters while hardly affecting the magical ones.

[The Random NPC]

In my experience, GMs who think that 500 bucks is adequate payment for jobs are really big on "Oh, yeah that stuff's broke you won't get any money for it" or "Oh no you can't sell that because of [reasons]!"

That's not to hate on low power campaigns which can be a lot of fun, but a lot of GMs think that just withholding money is enough to make a campaign low powered, which just takes a lot of power away from mundane characters while hardly affecting the magical ones.

If this is directed at me, I completely agree. I have noticed this in the past as well, but the excuses I heard were more along the lines of "there isn't anything to steal". Mostly I'm just posting because it gives me an excuse to do Math to things.

[DigoDragon]

I've started campaigns with an opening payment of 500 nuyen. The Johnson usually says something along the lines of the mission being a test of their abilities before he offers them real jobs (The PCs of course, being unproven newbies to the shadows).

Usually it's a fetch quest or a quick B&E for something shady and the Johnson plants a few agents to watch the team. If the players are professional and don't ask too many questions, then we move on to real business. Once the PCs have a few successes and get their names out, the work comes to them.


As for stealing stuff to padd out their earnings, I always allow it, but I make them work with their contacts to fence the goods (plus, high ticket items like boosting that fancy car means you gotta take out any RFID tracker before the police are alerted that it's hot).

[comicshorse]

True, but I've found that the Johnson's low payouts can usually be subsidized by stealing and selling everything you can. You can start with the guns or sticks off every gaurd you can take out. And any cameras set up as security. And any cyber you can rip off of corpses.

Or the corpses themselves if you have contacts among the ghouls :smallcool:

[Driderman]

I'm thinking the low-payout mission was more meant as a cheap introduction. He did also set us up with a pretty expensive, only slightly used and bloodstained cyberdeck which I'm guessing is the hook for the next story :smallbiggrin:

As for playing magic-user, I would except I kinda took on the Face role and in a group of currently 3 players, we already have a shaman and a physical adept. Adding another magic-user seems off, and I'd probably just overshadow the current shaman if I did.
I think I'll max out on resources and spend my 450000 nuyen on charisma, logic and reaction-enhancing biotech, making me a situational charisma bomb and secondary infiltrator and possibly hands-on hacker (as opposed to a Matrix-decker).

Maybe it's just that I'm from a rather different school of roleplaying, and focus a lot more on establishing quirks and character flaws to play off, rather than designing a specialized, high-powered mercenary. I get the feeling that maybe I'm making a dramatic character, for a puzzle game...

[TheOOB]

I've started campaigns with an opening payment of 500 nuyen. The Johnson usually says something along the lines of the mission being a test of their abilities before he offers them real jobs (The PCs of course, being unproven newbies to the shadows).

Usually it's a fetch quest or a quick B&E for something shady and the Johnson plants a few agents to watch the team. If the players are professional and don't ask too many questions, then we move on to real business. Once the PCs have a few successes and get their names out, the work comes to them.


As for stealing stuff to padd out their earnings, I always allow it, but I make them work with their contacts to fence the goods (plus, high ticket items like boosting that fancy car means you gotta take out any RFID tracker before the police are alerted that it's hot).

Any shadowrunner I've ever played would walk if they were offered 500 for a run. Remember that Shadowrunners are not street punks or gang members. They are professional criminals who are willing to put their life on the line for a stranger who will deny their existence should something goes wrong. You have to pay for that.

My general rule is, unless I'm hooding(and even then) I won't get out of bed for less than 5k, and if the run is expected to be risky or dangerous, 10k min, and that's per runner. You need a shadowrunner to walk a package across the street, better cough up the money. If it's not worth that much money to you, it's not a job that needs a runner(there are hundreds of other crims who will do it for less, just not with the professionalism and deniability of a runner).

Part of this is for the setting, if a runner takes crap wages, it puts out the reputation that they are cheap and not worth good money. The other big part is game balance. Some characters(namely awakened and technomancers) get more powerful by karma, while some characters(hackers, riggers, and samurai) get better with nuyen. If you give out karma without giving out enough nuyen, you are making awakened characters overpowered compared to the rest of the team(the opposite is also true, but not as common). A karma is worth about 2.5k nuyen, so over the long run, you should try to balance things to between 2 and 3k nuyen per karma earned.

[The Random NPC]

I can understand taking a pay cut to get your foot in the door or for the Johnson to test you. But I also agree that 500 nuyen is too little. I'm personally comfortable with 3000 nuyen per runner, I'd be ok with taking 2500 nuyen. Maybe even 2000 nuyen if the long term payout was good enough.

[DigoDragon]

Any shadowrunner I've ever played would walk if they were offered 500 for a run. Remember that Shadowrunners are not street punks or gang members. They are professional criminals who are willing to put their life on the line for a stranger who will deny their existence should something goes wrong.

For professionals yes I totally agree, but like I said, my players were "unproven newbies to the shadows". In essense, yes, they ARE street punks and gangers. Many are unemployed blue/white collar newbs that never done anything worse than get a parking ticket.

See, my style of starting out a Shadowrun game is for the players to be low level average people with no experience in Running. They get picked up by a Johnson and he molds them into a professional team. The pay may be crud for that first mission, but he's also paying them in experience and advice that'll keep them from ending up dead in a gutter before the end of the week. :smallbiggrin:

And the pay does gets serious once the team does.

[Driderman]

For professionals yes I totally agree, but like I said, my players were "unproven newbies to the shadows". In essense, yes, they ARE street punks and gangers. Many are unemployed blue/white collar newbs that never done anything worse than get a parking ticket.

See, my style of starting out a Shadowrun game is for the players to be low level average people with no experience in Running. They get picked up by a Johnson and he molds them into a professional team. The pay may be crud for that first mission, but he's also paying them in experience and advice that'll keep them from ending up dead in a gutter before the end of the week. :smallbiggrin:

And the pay does gets serious once the team does.

Sounds a lot like our approach. I think my character is the most "professional" of our bunch and that's mostly because she has a history as a Corp asset. Due to circumstances she had to go underground and now she's looking to get into shadowrunning both for ideological and economical reasons. The other characters are an Orc "gumshoe" who's better at thugging than investigation (and who really shouldn't be a physical adept but he's not particularly system-canny and the GM suggested it) and a newly-gifted (Awakened?) Bear Shaman and former cell mate of the aforementioned Orc. So yeah, pretty much punks and gangers :smallwink:

[TheOOB]

I can understand taking a pay cut to get your foot in the door or for the Johnson to test you. But I also agree that 500 nuyen is too little. I'm personally comfortable with 3000 nuyen per runner, I'd be ok with taking 2500 nuyen. Maybe even 2000 nuyen if the long term payout was good enough.

That can work, at least it's enough to pay for a month of low lifestyle, which they might need to keep the heat off.

[TheOOB]

For professionals yes I totally agree, but like I said, my players were "unproven newbies to the shadows". In essense, yes, they ARE street punks and gangers. Many are unemployed blue/white collar newbs that never done anything worse than get a parking ticket.

See, my style of starting out a Shadowrun game is for the players to be low level average people with no experience in Running. They get picked up by a Johnson and he molds them into a professional team. The pay may be crud for that first mission, but he's also paying them in experience and advice that'll keep them from ending up dead in a gutter before the end of the week. :smallbiggrin:

And the pay does gets serious once the team does.

If you're characters are 400BP characters, they are not street punks, they are well above street punks. A magician with magic 5 or 6 is rare and powerful(most wage mages have about 3 or 4 magic) capable of killing with a thought, your hacker or samurai likely has 50k+ in gear/'ware alone, it doesn't make sense that they would risk their life for a stranger for an amount that won't even pay a months rent if they do a run every week(low lifestyle is 2k a month and 500 a week before expenses does not pay for that.)

And as I said before, I hope everyone in your campaign plays an awakened character, because everyone else is going to be worthless next to their godlike team members.

[DigoDragon]

If you're characters are 400BP characters, they are not street punks, they are well above street punks.

Obviously. :smalltongue: I've only run one adventure at that starting level and it was akin to something from Ocean's Eleven. Johnson hires the 'second best' in the shadows to rob several million nuyen from a Casino and the PCs were getting 5-figures for their cut. Had a fun car chase at the end involving a public bus.

The first best were hired to defend the casino. :smallbiggrin:
(and of course the Johnson doesn't even mention this, mwahaha)



And as I said before, I hope everyone in your campaign plays an awakened character, because everyone else is going to be worthless next to their godlike team members.

Like I said before, it's less of a run and more of a test. Once passed then the team gets real missions with real pay, along with training, advice, and a chance to network.

[Thanatos 51-50]

Obviously. :smalltongue: I've only run one adventure at that starting level and it was akin to something from Ocean's Eleven. Johnson hires the 'second best' in the shadows to rob several million nuyen from a Casino and the PCs were getting 5-figures for their cut. Had a fun car chase at the end involving a public bus.

The first best were hired to defend the casino. :smallbiggrin:
(and of course the Johnson doesn't even mention this, mwahaha)




Like I said before, it's less of a run and more of a test. Once passed then the team gets real missions with real pay, along with training, advice, and a chance to network.

No runner worth his sidearm would so much as run on a Stuffer Shack for a stick of Sorghum for 500. The test would be whether or not they took the job.

[Delta]

The first best were hired to defend the casino. :smallbiggrin:
(and of course the Johnson doesn't even mention this, mwahaha)

Oh don't get me started on that one.

So many GMs seem to love this and it's often so ridiculously stupid, Johnsons holding back vital information about the target's security for no other reason but the GM thinking it's a genius move. The J is paying the runners a ton of money to do a job for him, shouldn't it be in his best interest to tell them what he can to ensure their success?

[Necroticplague]

Oh don't get me started on that one.

So many GMs seem to love this and it's often so ridiculously stupid, Johnsons holding back vital information about the target's security for no other reason but the GM thinking it's a genius move. The J is paying the runners a ton of money to do a job for him, shouldn't it be in his best interest to tell them what he can to ensure their success?

You want the runners to do a job, but the Johnson doesn't want them to live through it. Living Runners are loose ends in many circumstances, so logically the johnson would want to carefully control information given so that you succeed, but don't survive.Plus, dead runners get much less pay.If they wanted someone who wasn't disposable, they'd use Corp assets.

That's why I only trust ridiculously paranoid anonymous johnsons. If they let you know too much about them personally, that's practically a giant flag saying "BACKSTABBER".

[DigoDragon]

No runner worth his sidearm would so much as run on a Stuffer Shack for a stick of Sorghum for 500. The test would be whether or not they took the job.

And how professional they are about it. Last time I was on a team, one player kept video taping the missions for his online blog and two others had a habit of leaving cold bodies. That team didn't last long thereafter (in the literal sense. We screwed up one Johnson's mission so he called Lonestar on us. 2/3rds of the team was killed).



Oh don't get me started on that one.

So many GMs seem to love this and it's often so ridiculously stupid, Johnsons holding back vital information about the target's security for no other reason but the GM thinking it's a genius move. The J is paying the runners a ton of money to do a job for him, shouldn't it be in his best interest to tell them what he can to ensure their success?

Normally I agree and that would be how I run a Johnson (very rarely do I run a mission where the J backstabs the team), but in this particular case, the Johnson that hired the PCs to hit the caisno also hired the other runner team to defend it. He played the two teams against each other for his own personal gain (Johnson had a major insurance scam planned out). So indeed this was a rare backstabing mission.

I did purposely set up the adventure to allow the PCs two chances of learning of the betrayal and catching their Johnson to inflict whatever revenge they found fitting (They caught him on the second chance and killed his reputation by sending evidence of his scam to the casino's board of directors, plus shot him in the knee for good measure).

[NotAnAardvark]

What versions do you guys tend to run? I've been looking to DM a campaign and have had some trouble picking one after hearing so many varied things about... pretty much all of them. OP says 5 is terrible (and doesn't say why) but I've heard other people complaining about all the problems 4 had that supposedly get addressed in 5. And purists saying it's 3rd or bust. And people saying 3 isn't flexible enough and that I have to be playing 4.

So I'm at a loss (and not an aardvark).

[Driderman]

What versions do you guys tend to run? I've been looking to DM a campaign and have had some trouble picking one after hearing so many varied things about... pretty much all of them. OP says 5 is terrible (and doesn't say why) but I've heard other people complaining about all the problems 4 had that supposedly get addressed in 5. And purists saying it's 3rd or bust. And people saying 3 isn't flexible enough and that I have to be playing 4.

So I'm at a loss (and not an aardvark).

I've only ever played 1 session and that was 5th edition, a couple of weekes ago, but I did own 4th edition as well and have both read it and made several characters for it. They seemed very similiar, except for the "Priority System" (you have priorities A, B, C, D & E to assign to 5 different main areas of character creation meaning you'll have to forego some things to focus on others. I like it, I think). Of course, I haven't touched on decking and magic use at all, which I'm told have both been made better for 5th edition.
In any case, my very limited experience with 5th edition gave me the impression that it was a lot like older editions and it generally seemed like a decent enough system, so I'd suggest going for that since that's presumably the one that's "supported" by the developers now.

[Dimers]

I've played 2nd and 4th editions and seen 3rd. 3rd is fine, no complaints, but 4th seems like a better game mechanically without sacrificing any flavor. 2nd was messier than a Panzer shot hitting a ghoul.

What I've heard about 5th makes it sound like that twists the mechanics out of shape to fit the metagame, which would be okay if it weren't contradicting the fluff and expectations and mechanics of previous editions. It doesn't attract me. I don't know -- it's just the impression I've gotten.

There's a complete rewrite for the 4e hacking and computer rules, freely available online, and that helps a lot with one of 4e's less excellent areas. It's homebrew from top to bottom and takes a loooooong time to read, though, so not all gamemasters will use it.

[Rhynn]

(you have priorities A, B, C, D & E to assign to 5 different main areas of character creation meaning you'll have to forego some things to focus on others. I like it, I think)

I find it much easier to create competent (or competent-feeling) PCs with the 5E priority system (in part because it just gives you more numbers to play with, total) than the 4E system.


I haven't touched on decking and magic use at all, which I'm told have both been made better for 5th edition.

That's definitely debatable. I much prefer the 4E decking system, which is, for one thing, more plausible-feeling. (Not plausible, necessarily, just more plausible...)


In any case, my very limited experience with 5th edition gave me the impression that it was a lot like older editions and it generally seemed like a decent enough system, so I'd suggest going for that since that's presumably the one that's "supported" by the developers now.

It's going to take years for there to be as much material for 5E as 4E already has. I've never understood what "support" matters - I get just as much out of playing a 25-year-old RPG that's not had anything published for it in 15 years as I do out of one that's still having stuff written for it. It's not like you can actually run out of material, especially when it's easy to create it yourself...

I'd say the only way to decide which edition to go for is to get a feel for them and decide what you prefer. Without the ability to do that, though I'd recommend 4E for now. It's much easier, IMO, to include the good parts of 5E in 4E than to fix 5E.

Speaking of which, did they put out the errata for the enormous glaring mistakes in 5E yet, and when are they releasing a re-edited version with all the incorrect page references, etc., fixed?

[Delta]

You want the runners to do a job, but the Johnson doesn't want them to live through it. Living Runners are loose ends in many circumstances, so logically the johnson would want to carefully control information given so that you succeed, but don't survive.Plus, dead runners get much less pay.If they wanted someone who wasn't disposable, they'd use Corp assets.

But in most circumstances, that's not really possible. If the job's about extracting or stealing something/someone, the team HAS to survive to be able to deliver the payload.

And if no team comes back after working for that particular Johnson, sooner or later no one of any reputation and experience will be willing to work for him, guys who routinely backstab and kill the runners they hire will soon run out of runners to hire.

[comicshorse]

But in most circumstances, that's not really possible. If the job's about extracting or stealing something/someone, the team HAS to survive to be able to deliver the payload.

And if no team comes back after working for that particular Johnson, sooner or later no one of any reputation and experience will be willing to work for him, guys who routinely backstab and kill the runners they hire will soon run out of runners to hire.

Exactly, and that's if some of the Runners they backstabbed don't get the Johnson first. The problems with getting on the wrong side of professional Shadowrunners speak for themselves

[Delta]

It really depends on what needs to be done and who you want for the job. If all the J needs are some gutter punks, sure he'll get that and can get rid of them afterwards without any problem. But if you need highly trained professionals with rare skills and expensive equipment (like deckers and mages), then we're way out of "just kill them off to tie up loose ends" afterwards.

Of course there are always exceptions, sometimes the information is THAT sensitive, but as a general rule "kill the hirelings" isn't a good business plan if you depend on having hirelings do a lot of your dirty work.

[DigoDragon]

What versions do you guys tend to run?

I run 4th. I've played in older editions, but 4th was the easiest for my players to get into since most of them were veterans of GURPS.

[Necroticplague]

Exactly, and that's if some of the Runners they backstabbed don't get the Johnson first. The problems with getting on the wrong side of professional Shadowrunners speak for themselves

Yes, we do have a fun time striking back at the Johnson that tried to have us offed. One of the perks of cyberzombism: shrugging off rigged traps with little difficulty. "This is the ear of the man you sent after me. And here's the rest of his head for good measure.He was probably cheaper than my half after pay, right? Did you consider he was a lot cheaper for a reason?"

[LibraryOgre]

I have played every edition except 5th, all while they were the current edition. Personally, I liked 4th the best, though it had its problems; 1st and 2nd had the best fluff material.

[comicshorse]

What versions do you guys tend to run? I've been looking to DM a campaign and have had some trouble picking one after hearing so many varied things about... pretty much all of them. OP says 5 is terrible (and doesn't say why) but I've heard other people complaining about all the problems 4 had that supposedly get addressed in 5. And purists saying it's 3rd or bust. And people saying 3 isn't flexible enough and that I have to be playing 4.

So I'm at a loss (and not an aardvark).

I've played 1st through 4th.
First was a awful mess and should be ignored
Second was miles better.
Third was basically second but with some of the problems smoothed over and is my choice to play
Fourth I hate but I'm deeply prejudiced against 'Points Buy' systems so YMMV

[SaurOps]

I've played 1st through 4th.
First was a awful mess and should be ignored
Second was miles better.
Third was basically second but with some of the problems smoothed over and is my choice to play
Fourth I hate but I'm deeply prejudiced against 'Points Buy' systems so YMMV

Fourth's point buy would have been easier to deal with if the points hadn't been so inflated.

[Delta]

If the character creation is your only problem with 4th the priority system is in the Runners Companion sourcebook as an alternative.

[Rhynn]

Fourth I hate but I'm deeply prejudiced against 'Points Buy' systems so YMMV

If I was going to run a Shadowrun campaign right now, I'd probably use 4E with older fluff/style and the 5E priorities (not the 4E Runner's Companion ones) plugged in, possibly slightly tweaked.

[Lord Torath]

I played 2nd Edition with mostly 1st Edition splat books (although we had the updated Street Samurai Catalog, and I think the 2E Grimiore). I have a lot of fond memories of that game (we played for over a year, and my Karma Pool was up to about 25 when we quit).

Matrix Running always seemed to take forever. Which edition has the most streamlined rules for the Matrix?

[Necroticplague]

I played 2nd Edition with mostly 1st Edition splat books (although we had the updated Street Samurai Catalog, and I think the 2E Grimiore). I have a lot of fond memories of that game (we played for over a year, and my Karma Pool was up to about 25 when we quit).

Matrix Running always seemed to take forever. Which edition has the most streamlined rules for the Matrix?

I think 3e or 4e did. Basically, hacking was just magic, with the matrix replacing the astral. Technomancers were even more so, having a matrix analogue for pretty much everything magic (improvised spell=weaving, rote=program, spirit =sprite, ect.)

[Rhynn]

Matrix Running always seemed to take forever. Which edition has the most streamlined rules for the Matrix?

4E, IMO; the Matrix rules are so simple that every character should have a Matrix-capable commlink and benefits from it without the game slowing down. It creates what I feel to be a generally plausible level of "being online" (which, really, is lacking in most pre-Internet, and even post-Internet but pre-smartphones-and-social-media cyberpunk games), without bogging down play too bad. If you get all logically simulationist, it still makes most sense for the hacker to not be physically present everywhere if the connections are good, but I've never minded that - a primary hacker who sits in a saferoom, plus some secondary hacking-capable guys ont he ground, works fine by me. (I feel the exchange is fine: you're not being shot at, but if you do get tracked down by the opposition, the rest of the team can't help you easily.)

Net rules are the bane of the cyberpunk RPG genre.

[SaurOps]

If the character creation is your only problem with 4th the priority system is in the Runners Companion sourcebook as an alternative.

Priorities and karmagen are nice. I just think that the point buy could have been set up to operate a bit more tightly.

[NotAnAardvark]

Thanks for the input, it's quite helpful.

The lack of secondary materials for 5 (and I'm not quite sure how I'd convert special races, one of my players wants to use one) make me a bit hesitant to play it right now. Plus the OP claims that it's a given that 5e is terrible.

One of my friends says he doesn't like 4e because there's too much emphasis on online equipment and hackers can function too well without even actually being with the party. Are these actual problems or is that just preference or fussiness?

Anyways thanks again for the input. Ill probably pick up a copy of 3 and 4 and read over 'em when I get home.

[Rhynn]

One of my friends says he doesn't like 4e because there's too much emphasis on online equipment and hackers can function too well without even actually being with the party. Are these actual problems or is that just preference or fussiness?

I don't consider them problems, or at least not ones exclusive to 4E. And telepresence hackers are better than a hacking minigame that sideline everything else (the usual problem in all cyberpunk RPGs). I personally see nothing wrong with the telepresence hacker (sitting at home or, at most, in the rigger's armored street battlevan, constantly in communication with the party and doing what needs to be done); it just feels more believable to me.

[Dimers]

It's interesting how the "telepresence" issue was brought up before the rules even started in the base 4e book -- it was in the short story in the front. The hacker complains about having to do the run in meatspace. And the rigger gets killed without anyone around to help him because he's sitting in the van instead of joining the team inside.

In 4e, Matrix, Astral and physical actions take about the same amount of time; with investment, you can get three or four actions per round of combat time in one of those tracks, and all three spaces function simultaneously. That helps cut down on problems of the party being split up. The hacker can be hacking and the mage can be scanning auras while the B&E specialist rigs up a rope, the gun-bunny lays down suppressive fire, and the rigger maneuvers her drones into position.

[DigoDragon]

It's interesting how the "telepresence" issue was brought up before the rules even started in the base 4e book -- it was in the short story in the front. The hacker complains about having to do the run in meatspace. And the rigger gets killed without anyone around to help him because he's sitting in the van instead of joining the team inside.

I do like that story. I've killed two hackers in a similar manner. They hid off in some corner by themselves thinking they are safe from getting shot at... one got his location traced, so a drone drove by and shot him in the head. The second hacker lost a fight against some agents and Lonestar captured his unconscious body. He was as good as dead in their custody.


I played a hacker once, with the concept that he was a "Combat Hacker". He wore a harness loaded out with a few small drones equipped with guns and ECM devices. Wasn't a bad character. Actually pretty funny because he gave each drone a girl's name and treated them all like his favorite pets. That was amusing to RP.

[squiggit]

The worst thing about 5 is that it's new. And for some reason the devs have been hesitant to do... anything. So no errata and almost no supplemental material.

If you like limits or like the direct combat hackers can do in 5... You'd be better off just house ruling 4th. 4e just has a lot more to work with and it's a lot easier converting a few rules down rather than trying to convert everything else up. Hell I'm still having trouble converting some of the special races from 4 to 5.

[Roncorps]

Matrix Running always seemed to take forever. Which edition has the most streamlined rules for the Matrix?

From what I heard, SR3 using Virtual Realities 2.0 matrix rule. 15 minutes and the whole thing is done (source : Dumpshock)

[Rhynn]

The worst thing about 5 is that it's new. And for some reason the devs have been hesitant to do... anything. So no errata and almost no supplemental material.

There appear to be two (http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=39006) different threads (http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=mlq9886l6b8dfft6hrslkpsev4&topic=11363.0) soliciting notes for errata (Patrick Goodman is credited as a proofer of 5th edition), but I just get the feeling that they gave up in the face of the sheer volume of horrible gaps in the rules people were gleefully pointing out.

I'd probably feel kinda down in the dumps about it, too...

[squiggit]

There appear to be two (http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=39006) different threads (http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=mlq9886l6b8dfft6hrslkpsev4&topic=11363.0) soliciting notes for errata (Patrick Goodman is credited as a proofer of 5th edition), but I just get the feeling that they gave up in the face of the sheer volume of horrible gaps in the rules people were gleefully pointing out.

I'd probably feel kinda down in the dumps about it, too...

Well one of the working theories I've seen is that that's why all the upcoming supplements and splatbooks have suddenly gone dark is all the work going into cleaning up the core book.

I'm not sure if it's "just giving up in the face of sheer volume" though because frankly damn near every RPG seems to come out with huge holes in it. A lot of them way more toxic than SR5's. But who knows. Feels weird that there's so little... anything when the game was supposedly a good seller.

It's a shame because I really want to like 5e. It has some cool stuff in it and all that... but none of the patchy stuff has been fixed and there's no secondary resources at all.

[DigoDragon]

I saw an episode of Mythbusters last night that tested the WWI theory where digging right angles in trenches lessens the destructive blasts of an exposion inside the trench.

The straight line trench aplified the blast and I immediately thought of the Chunky Salsa Effect. Sharp right angles did help lessen the blast for anything past those turns. Was informative for my players who love to throw grenades indoors like candy on Holloween.

[squiggit]

Shadowrun 5th edition errata (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/126104/Shadowrun-Fifth-Edition-Core-Rulebook-Errata) current as of today. So brand new.

[Rhynn]

The squeaky wheel gets the grease (and maybe the motorcycle going 120 mph will now be more dangerous than the car going 20 mph on those squeaky wheels).

Downloading to read right now.

Edit: I can't make a lockpicking shepherd anymore? I hate this game!

Also, no fix for vehicle crash damage to passengers, lol.

[Lord Torath]

Anyone ever watch Sneakers (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105435/)? Should be required watching for any Shadowrun players. It's a great example of a modern-day (okay, a 1992) shadowrun team.

(I need to track down a DVD copy now. We have it on VHS, but all our VHS players have died.)

[LibraryOgre]

Anyone ever watch Sneakers (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105435/)? Should be required watching for any Shadowrun players. It's a great example of a modern-day (okay, a 1992) shadowrun team.

(I need to track down a DVD copy now. We have it on VHS, but all our VHS players have died.)

It is a run that goes pretty much perfectly, right down to being screwed by the Johnson, and then turning around to raise the pay.

[comicshorse]

'Sneakers' is good though I always recommend 'Ronin' for any newbie Shadowrunner

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0122690/?ref_=nv_sr_2

[Telok]

Layer Cake is a pretty good runner movie.

[Dr. Azkur]

Hey there, I'm new to the game and I'm about to start playing 3e.
I just read there is something called HMHVV... and it quite appealed to me. Is it possible to play a vampire? And would it be viable to play as a sorcerer? Cause apparently they lose essence... and the idea of not having essence 6 while playing any sort of mage just doesn't seem right to me.

EDIT: Oh and where to read about them would also be appreciated.

Cheers

[The Random NPC]

Don't know how it works in 3e, but in 4e, vampires automatically get a Magic stat and when they feed they can get up to 12 essence. IIRC, that allows them to buy Magic 12 before needing to initiate. Of course, if they lose essence below their Magic, they lose that point and have to buy it again.

[Delta]

Anyone ever watch Sneakers (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105435/)? Should be required watching for any Shadowrun players. It's a great example of a modern-day (okay, a 1992) shadowrun team.

(I need to track down a DVD copy now. We have it on VHS, but all our VHS players have died.)

I'd recommend against using the main characters strategy of just blindly trusting that US intelligence would never just kill anyone to get rid of them because they're the "good guys" and all that (it was the 90s... muuuuuch simpler times back then), in Shadowrun, that strategy might just backfire...

[Lord Torath]

Yeah. I was more thinking along the lines of "This is how you plan a run. Get plans to the building, investigate security, try to go in quietly (and get back out quietly), and never think your Johnson has told you the real story."

[DigoDragon]

I was more thinking along the lines of "This is how you plan a run. Get plans to the building, investigate security, try to go in quietly (and get back out quietly), and never think your Johnson has told you the real story."

Pretty much. Having a contact who works in the city hall records department is a great way to get copies of many building plans and permits cheaply. :smallbiggrin:

[comicshorse]

Hey there, I'm new to the game and I'm about to start playing 3e.
I just read there is something called HMHVV... and it quite appealed to me. Is it possible to play a vampire? And would it be viable to play as a sorcerer? Cause apparently they lose essence... and the idea of not having essence 6 while playing any sort of mage just doesn't seem right to me.

EDIT: Oh and where to read about them would also be appreciated.

Cheers

Vampires lose Essence but also can gain it by drinking the blood of the living. They can if they feed enough get up to Essence 12 which gives them Magic 12. The power problems this raise should be pretty obvious particulalrly when Vampires get a load of other Paranatural powers on top (though this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that they also get Weaknesses as well)
Playing a Vampire Mage is going to be problematic. I'd suggest that at the very least this should take your A priority (for being a Mage) and B ( for being a Vampire)
Even then the character may still be over-powered so this is something your G.M. is going to have to have a closer look at

Vampire details can be found in the 2nd Ed. book on p 231

Fourth Ed has specific rules for playing vampires in the Runners Companion but that's using the 4th Ed rules

[TimeWizard]

Hey guys! I've got some neophyte questions to ask. My only shadowrun experience has been Shadowrun Returns on pc (great game btw)

1) Japan takes over the world- I get the blade runner angle on this one, but it seems like the US is split between Megacorps, Native Americans, and Aztlan (which I'm 90% sure is Mexico). What does Japan have over these guys?

2) how's 5e? I might buy it and run it as the GM.

3) How hard is it to run? I've played a lot of other rpgs: DnD 3.5/4/PF, Exalted, Dark Heresy, Black Crusade. Is there anything unique to SR mechanics wise?

4) Can you give me an overview of what a typical run might look like? I have a sort of first run in mind. Meet a Johnson, do recon, sneak in, inevitably mess up something, sudden betrayal, fight out, regroup, get paid, rest.

5) How many PCs will I need? I can probably get 3 or 4.

6) what do I have to watch out for in 5e on the "totally broken" scale? Is a certain type of character significantly stronger/weaker than others? Are there any pitfalls I have to watch out for?

Thanks! Hopefully I'll be joining you guys soon.

[Delta]

1) Japan takes over the world- I get the blade runner angle on this one, but it seems like the US is split between Megacorps, Native Americans, and Aztlan (which I'm 90% sure is Mexico). What does Japan have over these guys?

Shadowrun and cyberpunk in general is a child of the 80s, a time in which everyone believed that complete japanese global economical dominance was only a question of time. In the 90s, the japanese stock market completely imploded and put an end to that, but by that time Shadowrun had already established its universe with no less than 5 japanese megacorps as opposed to only 3 from the rest of the world.


3) How hard is it to run? I've played a lot of other rpgs: DnD 3.5/4/PF, Exalted, Dark Heresy, Black Crusade. Is there anything unique to SR mechanics wise?

It's difficult to run because it's different from most of the other ones you have listed, not neccessarily mechanics-wise (the closest from your list would be Exalted as in it's an attribute + skill pool system against a fixed threshold, only with d6 instead of d10) but because it's based much more on our real world than any of those other settings, that's an advantage because a lot of players can easily imagine how a lot of things work, but on the other hand you as the GM have to account for a lot of possibilities that aren't there in other games.


4) Can you give me an overview of what a typical run might look like? I have a sort of first run in mind. Meet a Johnson, do recon, sneak in, inevitably mess up something, sudden betrayal, fight out, regroup, get paid, rest.

I'd just recommend not making the "sudden betrayal" a regular thing because it does get old very quickly and often just doesn't make a lot of sense, but yeah, otherwise, that sounds like a typical run.


5) How many PCs will I need? I can probably get 3 or 4.

3 to 4 works perfectly, in my experience. Just make sure all the necessary fields of expertise are covered (combat, stealth, matrix, magic being the most important, obviously)

[comicshorse]

Hey guys! I've got some neophyte questions to ask. My only shadowrun experience has been Shadowrun Returns on pc (great game btw)

1) Japan takes over the world- I get the blade runner angle on this one, but it seems like the US is split between Megacorps, Native Americans, and Aztlan (which I'm 90% sure is Mexico). What does Japan have over these guys?

2) how's 5e? I might buy it and run it as the GM.

3) How hard is it to run? I've played a lot of other rpgs: DnD 3.5/4/PF, Exalted, Dark Heresy, Black Crusade. Is there anything unique to SR mechanics wise?

4) Can you give me an overview of what a typical run might look like? I have a sort of first run in mind. Meet a Johnson, do recon, sneak in, inevitably mess up something, sudden betrayal, fight out, regroup, get paid, rest.

5) How many PCs will I need? I can probably get 3 or 4.

6) what do I have to watch out for in 5e on the "totally broken" scale? Is a certain type of character significantly stronger/weaker than others? Are there any pitfalls I have to watch out for?

Thanks! Hopefully I'll be joining you guys soon.

1) Japan hasn't taken over the world. Japan is a very strong economic power and a strong military power but they haven't taken over the world. In fact I think the only place occupied by them outside if Japan is San Francisco and they may have given that up by 5th ED

3) Matrix running can be a pain as it means the Decker doing something while the rest of the party sit and wait.

4) That sounds pretty good. Though it has been Known for P.C.s to skip the 'inevitably mess up' part

5) To cover all bases you'll need a full magician, a combat character (Street samurai/Physical Adept) and a Face. Unless you're running a Decker as a NPC (which solves some of the problems of 3 above) you will need a Decker. So 3 or 4 PC's should do

6) I'm not very familiar with 5th ED but I have heard bad things about 'Summoner' mages (Mages who summon spirits to do the Run for them) and some of my experience with 4th bears out that they can get to be a pain


P.S.
Damn Ninja'ed. Physical Adept'ed ?

Posted by Delta

Shadowrun and cyberpunk in general is a child of the 80s, a time in which everyone believed that complete japanese global economical dominance was only a question of time. In the 90s, the japanese stock market completely imploded and put an end to that, but by that time Shadowrun had already established its universe with no less than 5 japanese megacorps as opposed to only 3 from the rest of the world.

True but they did kind of acknowledge that with the introduction of several other mega-corporations into the background. Wuxing seeming to acknowledge China's growing economic power

[Delta]

True but they did kind of acknowledge that with the introduction of several other mega-corporations into the background. Wuxing seeming to acknowledge China's growing economic power

Yeah later editions went back on that somewhat with the breaking up of Fuchi and inclusion of newer non-japanese megacorps, but still the historical basis of Shadowrun says that the 80s economic boom just never went away but instead took Japan all the way to the top, and that's the reason why it's so dominant.

[TimeWizard]

great, thanks for the quick responses. I'll strike "sudden betrayal" from my first run and save it for a meaningful situation.

So the big roles are Magic, Hacking, Combat and Diplomacy?

What's bad about Summoners? I only know them from SR Returns where Summons are like special use Rigger Drones, but with magic.

[comicshorse]

So the big roles are Magic, Hacking, Combat and Diplomacy?


Yes although Riggers can be damn useful as well. Particulalrly on missions were subtlety is not really a consideration


What's bad about Summoners? I only know them from SR Returns where Summons are like special use Rigger Drones, but with magic.

Well, from what I've heard, pretty much just power. Its way too easy for a decently designed mage to just whip up a really powerful spirit that can crush the opposition for the team

[TimeWizard]

Is there a downside to this? Cost, duration, karma investment, etc? Or is there any chance of backfire- can the summon get loose and do its own thing?

[Delta]

Is there a downside to this? Cost, duration, karma investment, etc? Or is there any chance of backfire- can the summon get loose and do its own thing?

Well, summoning does have a karma investment obviously, but less so than spellcasting, since for both you need skills, but the spells cost karma to learn while you can just summon a spirit whenever you feel like it.

Summoning (and magic in general) is definitely the most powerful tool in the hands of a PC who knows what he's doing, mechanics-wise, background-wise, being a powerful matrix user can be even more gamebreaking, but most groups seem to simply ignore or severely limit that power.

[TheCountAlucard]

And in the latest edition, the writers do it for you!

/doesn't like 5e's Matrix rules. :smallsigh:

[Telok]

You might want to include Medic in your role list. It isn't a primary role but it's important that at least two people in the group can keep someone alive untill the Doc-Wagon pickup can arrive.

Two more things. With new players they may all end up being gun-bunnies, sams, and ninjas. No magic, no non-combat skills, and no contacts beyond Fixer/Johnson/Bartender. Try to get at least one person to diversify beyond murder skills. They also need at least one person who can drive and has access to a van or other roomy vehicle with tinted windows.

[Lord Torath]

You really want someone with a good Negotiation skill too. It sucks when your loot sells for 15% of its value, when you could be getting 50%. They can also help you pay less for big-ticket items, and get paid more per run.

[TimeWizard]

They're pretty well versed in tabletop rpg's, diversification shouldn't be too much of a problem. Oh, more questions
* What the hell are Technopaths? TvTropes makes me think they aren't mages, and they aren't deckers
* How does Class and Level system work? is it like SR Returns where you spend Karma wherever you want to unlock better stats?
* Are there Martial Art styles? How is Physical Adept?